Sort out your staff issues, City Power tells Eskom as customers sit in the dark

City Power has “raised concerns” with Eskom over a go-slow by employees, leading to delays lasting hours in the restoration of power after load-shedding in parts of Gauteng.

“Our customers have in recent days been hard done by when electricity is supposed to be restored after load-shedding, with many restored several hours after their scheduled times,” said City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena.

Most affected customers were in the “border” areas, including Randburg, Midrand and Lenasia.

Mangena said customers in Johannesburg areas such as Northriding and Windsor were the hardest hit, going three to five hours without power after load-shedding had ended.

Mangena said the Windsor substation was load-shed at 2am on Wednesday and was due to operate again at 4.30am but by 8am power had not been restored.

“[On Tuesday] the same Windsor customers were shed at 2pm and due to be restored by 4.30pm but were restored just before 7pm due to delayed restoration by Eskom.”

The same challenge was experienced by customers supplied by the Olivedale substation which supplies power to parts of Northriding.

In a statement on October 31, Eskom confirmed there were delays attending to network faults due to some technicians embarking on a go-slow.

Daphne Mokwena, a senior customer service manager at the power utility, said technicians who were not part of the go-slow were left to attend to network faults and restore supply.

“We can confirm Eskom management met the trade unions and labour matters were resolved, with the agreement that technicians would resume operations,” Mokwena said.

But Mangena said this was unacceptable and called on the power utility to sort out its staffing issues.

“We call on Eskom to address its staff issues, or fix its system to enable it to operate load-shedding remotely instead of manually,” he said. “We have raised our concerns with Eskom in this regard and appeal to our customers to bear with us while we try to resolve this with Eskom.”

Monde Bala, Eskom's group executive for distribution, said during a media briefing on Wednesday afternoon that there was no “go slow” or any industrial action affecting the parastatal at the moment.

“We did have a situation with some of our employees in the week that ended October 28 and 29, wherein, mainly in the Sandton area, there was unhappiness. That was addressed and resolved. People are back at work.

“I may also add that, at this point, Eskom employees are fully dedicated to serving customers and the country,” he said.

Bala said that this situation last month had resulted in some customers not getting power back after their load-shedding slots had ended. It was “mainly linked to the issue of overtime”, he said.

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