Hallo? Is there somebody there?

Ward 84 committee member infrastructure Gill Stewart writes:

For many of us the nonsense started on Sunday evening.

There were then at least two outages on Monday night as well. Tuesday the power went on and off several times.

It takes a minimum of twenty minutes to get through to the call centre, if you are that fortunate, regardless of the time of calling.

We find it impossible to believe they are being inundated with calls at times like two in the morning, yet one still gets the “high call volumes” story within 30 of an outage. Having to use a cellphone to call City Power call centre several times on successive days to report outages does very bad things to a budget.

The city’s water, electricity and roads call centres should be toll free numbers. If City Power actually had to foot the bill for the calls we make, perhaps the holding times would improve markedly. I know our finances would.

As ward committee member for infrastructure I am expected to liaise between the city and the community with regard to electricity issues, but that does not mean I can afford gigantic phone bills for hours spent waiting for the call centre to deign to answer the phone.