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City Power would like to express its concern over the continued go-slow by Eskom employees, which is impacting our customers negatively at a time the country is going through loadshedding. 

Our customers have in recent days been hard done by as a result of delays in restoring electricity after loadshedding, with many restored several hours after their scheduled restorations. This has been affecting customers in most of our “border” areas that include Randburg, Midrand and Lenasia. 

Our areas in Johannesburg north that include Northriding and Windsor, have been the hardest-hit with customers going for three to five hours without power after they were loadshed. These include a transformer at Windsor substation, and another at Olivedale substation, which supplies power to parts of Northriding. 

For example, Windsor substation was today loadshed at 02h00 and was due for restoration at 04h30. By 08h00, it was not restored. Yesterday the same Windsor customers were shed at 14h00 and due to be restored by 16h30. But the customers were only restored just before 19h00 due to delayed restoration by Eskom.

The same challenge is faced by customers supplied from Olivedale substation. It was yesterday shed at 14h00, due for restoration at 16h30. But the customers were only switched on just before 19h00 due to delayed restoration after loadshedding. 

This is unacceptable. We have raised our concerns with Eskom in this regard, and appeal to our customers to bear with us as we try resolve this with Eskom.

Last week Eskom issued a statement acknowledging its challenges with its technicians’ response times, and confirming they are on a go-slow over overtime allowances. We call on Eskom to address it staff issues, or fix their system to enable them to operate loadshedding remotely instead of manually. 

Issued City Power Spokesperson Isaac Mangena