Difficulty reporting electrical faults

ON SATURDAY, March 16, my electricity failed to come on after loadshedding completed at 4pm.

The eThekwini Electricity call centre at 080 13 13 1111 offers “Operating hours 24 hours, 7 days a week. Electricity faults and breakdowns.”

My partner and I took turns, holding on for a total of nearly two hours, while we listened to a pre-recorded message about how important our call was.

The repetitive message became irritating and extremely frustrating. This frustration prompted me to get hold of a member of our neighbourhood watch, to see if he could help.

The deputy mayor was asked to resolve this conundrum. The customer can’t get a reference number because the call centre is effectively not answering their phones, and the electricity engineers are under strict instructions not to attend to any fault without a reference number.

At 9.06pm my neighbourhood watch guy sent me a reference number. Who finally resolved this and how it was done – I do not know.

After that, it started to rain. Rain and electricity don’t mix well, so I didn’t hold out for engineers to arrive that night.

At 7.45am on Sunday, the engineers arrived and isolated the problem.

My compliments to the engineers. The call centre, on the other hand, deserves only to be admonished severely.

I have to ask what an average citizen, who does not have friends in high places, should do when he or she feels that they can’t wait until a weekday for a resolution.

I would really like to know:

Is the Electricity Call Centre manned at all over a weekend?

If so, how many call operators are employed versus an average number of calls in a weekend?

ROYDEN HARRISON | Musgrave