The Democratic Alliance (DA) will write to the Premier of Gauteng, David Makhura, to urgently intervene to ensure that power is restored in Germiston.

The electricity department standby teams have been on strike due to non-payment of overtime. This is a common occurrence in Ekurhuleni and the long electrical outages puts a huge strain on our communities.

The Germiston area has been without power since Sunday, with reports of severe damage to various substations, with no assistance at all from the ANC run Ekurhuleni Metro to resolve this issue.

Since 2019, this has become a common occurrence in Ekurhuleni with hundreds of power outages every year decimating the local economy and putting livelihoods at risk, especially regarding the strain the extended Covid-19 lockdown continues to put on the economy. These outages are over and above load shedding processes.

Many residents have already lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent never-ending lockdown South Africa continues to suffer through. They now have they extra stress of losing the little food they have due to the incompetence of the ANC-run Ekurhuleni. Not to mention the many residents there that are aged and dependent on oxygen.

The following steps have been taken by the DA ward councillors to assist in this critical issue:

They have been in contact with the City Manager to urgently resolve this issue, but no resolution has been reached as yet. A list of all the areas affected was sent through to her office as requested.

Letters and urgent calls have been sent to Mayor Mzwandil Masina to no avail.

The Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) chairperson, Faith Muthambi, was contacted yesterday for assistance. She advised that she would get her office to send an urgent memo to the Mayor to get this matter dealt with. A letter was also sent to her office this morning regarding the urgency of this matter as it has not been resolved yet.

To date, no credible resolutions have transpired in real actions despite the Ekurhuleni Energy department and executive office bearers of the ANC advising that they are urgently addressing this matter.

The energy department of Ekurhuleni is severely understaffed – compared to the City of Cape Town for instance – and ward councillors are often kept in the dark with no feedback from the department.

The inability of Ekurhuleni to provide a stable supply of electricity to the Germiston area is a breach of its constitutional obligations to deliver basic services, and possibly also a breach of its licensing conditions with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA).

Scores of petitions have been submitted by residents and business owners to all levels of government and just recently a petition with 20 000 signatures was submitted to Parliament to address this matter.

The Premier can no longer linger in addressing these serious concerns and ensuring that the damage to the substations are investigated. The lives and livelihoods of the Germiston residents depend on it.

Issued by DA