JOBURG Mayor Mpho Phalatse has finally responded to memorandums the residents of Soweto submitted to her over two months ago.
Phalatse faced a tough crowd at the Jabulani Theatre in Soweto on Saturday 10, as the residents have waited for two months to hear the responses to their memorandums.
Phalatse told residents, "I want you to know that I, together with my office, analysed each and every one.
What was clear was that 90% of the issues that you delivered to me relate to Eskom."
Phalatse said, "First, it is important for all of our residents to understand that the City has no jurisdiction over Eskom. The CEO of Eskom does not report to me; he reports to a Board, and he reports directly to the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan.
"I cannot tell Eskom what to do.
"What I can do, and what I have been doing is to fight for you. We have been working with Eskom and engaging with them for months."
Most of the grievances Soweto raised in June when they marched to Phalatse, were issues with Eskom's infrastructure (Mini Subs) in the area which had not been serviced or damaged, leaving scores of residents in the dark for months.
READ: Load shedding nightmare - cable thieves strike
Eskom's Dephny Mokoena, who was not very popular with the crowd for pointing out wrong things that communities do to Eskom's infrastructure, shed some light on why some residents find themselves in the dark.
She said, "If we don't address the issue of mini-subs, we will always be in the cold during winter.
"Most of the mini-subs are off because people have bypassed the meters. There are some people from the communities that have self-nominated themselves to operate on our mini-subs.
"These people are not authorised even by Eskom to be operating on these mini subs."
She said when these unauthorised people fiddle with the mini-subs, they end up damaging them or they explode.
Soweto resident, Robert Nyathi from Dlamini told the People's Paper that prepaid electricity is expensive for those who are not working.
"I'm not happy with the R6 000 that Eskom has proposed as a fine.
"The prepaid electricity is also hard to keep the lights on."
