By Akani Nkuna
City Power has warned that severe weather conditions could delay efforts to restore electricity in affected areas, as its teams face difficult working conditions while responding to outages and assessing infrastructure damaged by adverse weather.
The utility issued several updates on Tuesday on its response to power outages across Gauteng and urged consumers to use electricity sparingly to avoid overloading the system, which it said remained “constrained”.
City Power is dealing with more than 2,000 outages across the province. In the past 24 hours, the Lenasia Service Delivery Centre recorded the highest number of calls at 424, followed by Hursthill with 349.
Midrand recorded the lowest number of calls at 27, while Alexandra recorded 168, Randburg 196, the Inner City 290 and Reuven 313.
Some service delivery centres are nearing full restoration, with Hursthill and Randburg both at 75%.
However, City Power said work in some areas, particularly the Inner City, including Braamfontein and Parktown, would resume only once it was safe for teams to access the affected infrastructure.
“Operators will proceed with investigations once weather conditions permit safe access to affected network. The outcome of the investigation will determine the required repair and restoration process,” the utility said.
Meanwhile, the City of Johannesburg’s waste management entity, Pikitup, is facing an ongoing strike by more than 300 casual workers who are demanding permanent employment and have raised allegations of nepotism and corruption in the recruitment process.
CoJ Deputy Mayor and Finance MMC Loyiso Masuku told the SABC over the weekend that the casual workers were not employed by the City but by Pikitup as the service provider.
She said Pikitup employed the workers on its own terms, which were not determined by the City.
Masuku said the contractual agreements between Pikitup and the workers did not guarantee permanent employment once their contracts expired.
“Where we wanted to improve capacity as the city we then said, we understand that there may be those who would have been working for a long time in these particular companies. Those would then have to be considered [for permanent employment],” Masuku said.
She challenged workers who had allegedly been promised permanent employment to identify those responsible, saying such promises would be illegal and could result in consequences.
“Some casuals alleged that they gave fees to some people [to secure employment], those are the issues we need to deal with. I have said, give us names so we can act as the City of Johannesburg,” she said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Masuku posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, appealing to striking casual workers to allow Pikitup employees who were not involved in the dispute to continue working.
She warned that the disruption to waste collection could pose a health risk as refuse accumulates.
“Let us not intimidate or hurt people who are at work. Let us leave them to work whilst continuing to utilise the provided platforms to engage as management and workers,” Masuku said.
City Power and Pikitup were unavailable for comment at the time of publication.
