City Power has deployed all available technical resources and adjusted working hours to deal with the electrical crisis currently unfolding in Johannesburg.

“The recent heavy rains and flooding coupled with up to Stage 6 loadshedding means we are effectively dealing with a crisis situation," MMC for Environment & Infrastructure Service Department (EISD) Councillor Michael Sun said.

“City Power is rising to this unprecedented challenge with courage and focus. I have every confidence the technical strategy on the table will be effective and I am in constant communication with the City Power team to ensure that we get to every single outage without delay."

City Power is currently dealing with up to 1000 active outages and 4000 open calls reported by residents with no power. This is a moving target as infrastructure damaged by flooding comes under pressure alongside the added dangers of load-shedding & cable theft.

“I have also directed City Power's executive to ensure the recovery process is over communicated to the councillors and public".

However, it is noted with concern that there is an unauthorised infographic bearing City Power's logo being circulated. On the 9 December, City Power issued an internal memo to its employees requiring a 'disaster management' approach which means that City Power will go into a crisis management and resolution mode when outage calls reached 3000 calls threshold. Regrettably, this memo was used to mislead the community that City Power had declared a state of disaster on behalf of the City of Johannesburg and pulling back resources which is not true.

In fact, human resources and specific technical expertise have been pulled together in teams to stabilise the situation;

• All available electricians and assistants are being deployed to fault restorations with contractors sharing the workload.
• The teams will attend to ALL outages from 6am to 6pm.
• Area outages will continually to be attended after 6pm with individual and isolated outages to be attended to by day shift.
• Top management will meet at 7:00 am and as when required daily to regroup and resolve challenges.

City Power is now All Hands-on Deck to deal with the range of issues facing City Power from simple power restoration and cable faults to complex failing infrastructure and vandalism.

CLLR. Michael Sun

MMC: ENVIRONMENT AND INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES DEPARTMENT

For queries, contact:

Nickolaus Bauer, Deputy Director Communications & Stakeholder management EISD

0605286326 or nickolausb@joburg.org.za

​10/12/2022​