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City of Johannesburg Executive Mayor Herman Mashaba had first-hand experience of repairing and maintaining street lights as he joined Bryanston’s depot for their routine maintenance of the street lights in Gallo Manor in Sandton on Thursday, 26 July 2018.
The taste of the rough and tumble of fixing public lights appeared to have stirred his enthusiasm for outdoor work if his comments after the exercise are anything to go by.
“I enjoy doing this kind of work more than working in the office,” he said, obviously thrilled at being perched atop the cherry picker. You have our support, I have started service delivery meetings with Regional Directors and MMC’s. They cannot tell you there is no money when we have allocated money for such work,” Mayor Mashaba said.
He said the budget allocation made was to ensure that this work gets done well. He urged City Power to use the budget wisely and productively to maximise the effect of public money on service delivery.
Leading the team from the depot was acting the Bryanston Field Services Manager, Tiro Mokgosi, who explained the safety aspects and said technicians should never change the globes without switching off the light first.
Region E Regional Director Liziwe Ntshinga-Makoro said she was happy the project was led by a woman, City Power’s Mpitseng Mokgoko, who had done extraordinary work not only in Sandton but in the townships as well.
Engineering Operations Group Executive Isaac Sefohle Rampedi said the Engineering Operations unit was starting with a pro-active maintenance of streetlights, switchgears, transformers and substations.
“We will fix before customers call us and complain, every three months we go to different areas of our supply and check the problems and fix,” he explained.
Rampedi pledged that the department would pull all stops to avoid inconveniencing customers. “We must reduce outages by 5% every year.”
