City Power does not deserve the award

James Bowen from Roodepoort writes:

I have written to the Record before in connection with Pikitup and it’s problems.And thank goodness that problem was sorted out.But now I must add my voice to the City Power circus.I have been living in Florida Lake for 7 1/2 years and every year there has been problems with the electricity in the area.

On one occasion there was a blackout and I contacted the electricity dept in Westlake Drive about the matter. I was told that there was a problem at one of the sub stations in Goldman street in Florida and I was told not to worry because the technicians were busy there sorting out the problem.But when I drove down the whole length of Goldman Street I could not find any substation at all.So as I was driving down at the start of my street I found the cause of the problem.A small electricity box outside one of the houses had been vandalised and destroyed thus causing the whole problem.

I contacted City Power and again I was told the problem was in Goldman street so I told them that they were talking utter nonsense. I went down to their offices at just after 8pm and spoke to the official in charge. He was shocked at what I told him and as a result he immediately authorised someone to go there to sort the problem out.The repair men were there from about 9:30pm until about 01:30am. In other words the people who were answering the telephones were giving the wrong answers to the callers just to get rid of them. Diligent work? Don’t make me laugh because they don’t know what the word “Work” means.The only way that the service would be better and acceptable would be to employ people who can be trusted to do their work correctly in the way that it should be done.

I totally agree with what Gill Stewart wrote in this week’s paper about City Power’s so called efficient telephone system.About 11:30pm on Tuesday the power went off for about the tenth time in just over a week and sometimes twice in the same day. When the power was still off at 9:00am on Wednesday. I phoned up City Power’s head office in Heronmere Road, Reuven about the matter. After being on the phone for about 30 minutes I was eventually put through to the correct department. Thank goodness that the person to whom I spoke was very polite and also very helpful because in the past all the people have been very surly and rude to me. I explained to her exactly what the cause was for my call.I gave her all my details that she needed and she then checked up on her system. When she came back on the line and told me that they had about five other reports in the area, and the streets name that she gave me were about one-and-a-half kilometres from my house. She gave me a fault report reference number for my call.

About four hours after that call the power came back on and after about a hour later one of their repair vehicles with an extending platform on called around to find out if the power was restored.After I told them that it was they left and we could see them on the other side of the Hammerkop Bird sanctuary doing some more repairs. If only their responses could be so efficient all the time with the faults there we could could truly say that they deserved that honour but I am not sorry to say that for most of the time their services are far below that of “fertiliser”.