Maintaining Working Streetlights Requires Community to Stop Vandalism
The City of Ekurhuleni relies on community reports, in addition to other service interruption alert platforms such the call centre and mobile CoE App, to identify and promptly fix faulty streetlights.
However, when streetlights are constantly damaged by the community through vandalism, illegal connections and cable theft, the City finds it difficult to keep up with the high demand to repeatedly fix the same streetlights. This is in the context of limited government resources and rotational shift system necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to these incidents of vandalism, illegal connections and cable theft, the normal seven-day turnaround to attend to streetlight queries is negatively affected.
Furthermore, the limited staff complement prioritises attending to electricity outages over fixing of streetlights, resulting in delays.
Nevertheless, the City continues to conduct regular security patrols and surveillance but this is not sustainable without residents’ contribution to safeguarding their electrical infrastructure.
Customers are encouraged to report all electricity-related issues through its call centre on 0860 543 000 / call.centre@ekurhuleni.gov.za / My CoE App.