By Mashudu Mabila
The City of Johannesburg is pleading for a three-day exclusion from load shedding.
The plea comes as it tries to find solutions to overcome escalating faults and outages caused by heavy rains.
The torrential rains this past weekend have left many in the dark and the City is trying to get ahead on the claims.
The City said there were more than 4,000 service calls reported since Monday morning with areas like Hursthill, Northcliff, Roodepoort and Lenasia the hardest hit.
Johannesburg Mayor Mpho Phalatse submitted the request to Eskom as City Power is struggling to clear the increasing backlog.
MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services Michael Sun said the City had made progress but additional faults were being logged every hour.
“Given the urgent need for City Power to attend to the widespread and escalating faults the City has expressed its concern that load shedding is causing additional faults and stress on the network,” said Sun.
“But [it is] also preventing the entity from being able to effectively attend to the outages and to stabilise the situation.”
Sun said the operators have continued to work around the clock and the City deployed all available technical skills.
Even though the technicians have been working hard to contain the affected areas, thugs see them as easy targets adding much to their woes, said Sun. On Sunday, four City Power technicians were threatened at gunpoint, assaulted and robbed by six men in Jeppestown in full view of community members.
“We are appealing to Joburgers to help us to keep our workers safe so we can get through this crisis together,” Sun said.
Pictured above: Eskom technicians
Image source: @Eskom
