DOCRRA Response to the Electricity Crisis

Since early on in this festive season, our area has been plagued by large scale, ongoing electrical faults which have caused major inconvenience to residents and businesses alike.  This could not have come at a worse moment; when we are hosting thousands of visitors who have come to enjoy our beautiful coastline. 

On 16 December, at the outset of this crisis, DOCRRA wrote to the KwaDukuza Municipality (KDM) to call for an urgent inquiry into the outages that took place across the Southern Grid.  This request asked for an incident and response timeline, details on technical capacity preparedness, a log of preventative maintenance, and an explanation of why communication was not more timely and transparent.  A press release accompanied this correspondence, and both are available to view on our website.  To date, no response has been received from KDM. 

Throughout the festive period, as these outages have persisted, our executive committee and our electricity subcommittee have been hard at work mounting our strategy to find a solution to this untenable situation.  We are collaborating with all of our civil society partners as well as ward Councillors and the management of major residential estates.  Our multi-faceted approach includes the following:

1. An official complaint to NERSA, the South African energy regulator, detailing the severity of the crisis and requesting a full audit of KDM electrical infrastructure as well as the appropriate oversight measures.
2. A request for intervention by MEC for COGTA Rev. Buthelezi to unlock communication from an unresponsive KDM and to restore accountability.
3. A PAIA request to KDM for a complete log of the faults that have occurred, as well as maintenance logs.
4. Appropriate consultations with municipal law experts to explore all available legal recourse.

As and when information is available, we will communicate via our website and social media platforms to keep the community updated. 

Now more than ever, your support is needed to galvanise our efforts.  If you are not already a DOCRRA member, sign up today:

https://docrra.co.za/membership/#registration

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