Durban – If your home suffers an electrical outage after hours or over weekends, you may find yourself waiting until the "next shift" to have a technician come to your assistance.
IOL news editor, Lee Rondganger, found this out after his home and at least 14 others in Manor Gardens were without power for more than 80 hours.
On Sunday night, the lights went out just after 9pm following a cable fault due to mechanical failure from an overcharged circuit.
While electricity was restored to most of the homes in Manor Gardens by Tuesday morning, Rondganger's home was among 15 homes without electricity.
Despite several calls to the City's helpline and texts on the City's WhatsApp line, a team was only sent out to attend to the complaint late on Wednesday afternoon.
However, shortly after teams arrived and fixed the issue, residents' homes were again plunged into darkness. This time, they had to wait until the "next shift" for a new team to assess the problem.
Their electricity was eventually restored at about 10am on Thursday.
"What we have discovered as we battled the bureaucracy of the municipality to have our power restored, is the shambles plaguing the eThekwini electricity department that has wider implications for all Durban ratepayers – as the festive season approaches," Rondganger said.
“The eThekwini Municipality, in an effort to clamp down on rampant overtime claims by contractors and employees of the City has stopped paying for overtime in the electricity department. This means, according to various sources, that any electrical fault logged after hours will not be attended to," he added.
According to Glenwood councillor, Sakhile Mngadi, the City has cut overtime to 20 hours a week which essentially is about two hours a day.
"Workers are not working overtime so if there is a fault at 8pm, it will only be attended to the following day, if time permits. So because of this overtime issue, we are finding that faults really increase dramatically.
“Generally the City promised that faults will be attended to within 24 hours but we are seeing faults are not being attended to for three to four days and this is concerning.
“The overtime issue does have a major impact and given that we are in load shedding, that's what the general sentiment is. This is seeing a greater increase in time being spent with people being in darkness for longer times," Mngadi said.
However, the City refuted claims faults were not being attended to on time due to disputes about overtime.
eThekwini Municipality spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela said the turnaround time to fix a fault depended on the magnitude of the fault reported.
Mayisela explained that high and medium voltage cable faults took a bit longer to fix – half a day to a day.
“While low voltage cable faults would take 30 minutes to an hour. The delays at Manor Gardens had nothing to do with the overtime. They were compounded by difficulties to have access to three substations located in private properties.
“Unrelenting load shedding is making matters worse as the system is not designed to be switch on and off unceasingly. This is a recipe for the system to trip to the detriment of our clients,” he said.
Earlier this week, the City released a statement explaining the impact that load shedding is having on its infrastructure.
It said trip-outs after load shedding is due to in-rush currents when networks are switched back on.
The City offered this advice to residents:
To minimise possibilities of trip-outs, residents are advised to switch off non-essential appliances during load shedding.
When electricity supply returns, residents must not switch on appliances such as heaters, aircons, geysers, stoves, and pool pumps all at once.
It is advisable to switch on each appliance, 15 minutes apart to reduce the risk of prolonged outages.
Residents must also take note that load shedding has a huge negative impact on electrical equipment as it was not designed for such frequent switching. Therefore, there is a higher volume of faults during load shedding.
SA is currently on Stage 4 load shedding until 5am on Sunday morning. SA will then move to Stage 3 from Sunday until further notice.
IOL