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Acting MMC for EISD, Cllr Leah Knott is appealing for patience as City Power restores electricity supply to many Johannesburg households and businesses across the city. After conducting an oversight visit of key City Power installations in Regions B, C, G & F on Thursday it has become clear that Johannesburg is facing an unprecedented outages crisis.

“The recent extreme wet weather, return of rolling blackouts, breakdown in supply chains and runaway cable theft has hampered efforts by City Power to turn the lights back on,” said Acting MMC for Environment & Infrastructure Services Department Cllr. Leah Knott.

“But the challenges we are facing are substantial and all technicians and personnel are working around the clock and literally risking their livers to rescue the situation.”

Almost 2000 outages were experienced across the city over the past weekend alone as a surge in demand put significant strain on the City of Johannesburg’s aged electricity infrastructure network. City Power has deployed as many technicians and contractors as possible to restore supply to affected areas. But a breakdown in supply chain management has prevented many issues from being resolved as critical parts have not arrived at depots.

The implementation of rolling blackouts by Eskom from Monday evening has also contributed to the crisis. City Power’s efforts to restore outages and repair faults have been severely undermined as personnel are prevented from doing any work on sections of the network without uninterrupted power supply.

Rampant cable theft has further complicated the situation as City Power personnel are under sustained attack from criminals pilfering Johannesburg’s electrical infrastructure on daily basis. Three employees have lost their lives in the last week alone at the hands of cable thieves.

“There is nothing more frustrating than trying to live your life at home and at work without power. But we cannot change the simple fact that Johannesburg’s aging power infrastructure is not able to be fixed and perform seamlessly overnight. City Power technicians are literally working around the clock and risking their lives in the process to restore supply,” Acting MMC Knott added.

“Residents with power have a critical role to play immediately: switch off all geysers and pool pumps and use all appliances sparingly. City Power needs as much contingency power capacity as possible to deal with the outages backlog and return power to residents currently in the dark.”

The Department of Environment and Infrastructure Services will continue to monitor City Power’s restoration programme, and constantly communicate with the teams on the ground doing the work, keeping the public informed as the situation progresses. Moreover the department will urgently meet with the department of Public Safety to co-ordinate efforts in addressing the widespread theft of Johannesburg’s electrical infrastructure.

Issued by City of Joburg Acting MMC Environment and Infrastructure Services, Cllr Leah Knott