City Power Johannesburg

City Power Johannesburg (Pty) Ltd is realising its vision to become a world class electricity distributor. Jayne Alverca reports.

City Power Johannesburg (Pty) Ltd is a municipal-owned enterprise which was created in 2000 as the best way to meet the city’s current and projected electricity needs. In keeping with Johannesburg’s intention to become a world class African city, the vision of City Power is to perform as a world class electricity distributor.

Accountable to the Services and Infrastructure Department of the City Council, which is currently being re-engineered as a centre of excellence, City Power is wholly centred on the purchase, distribution and sale of electricity within the geographical footprint of the City of Johannesburg. The only exception is the area that takes in Soweto and Sandton (these are serviced separately by a distinct provider, Eskom).

As a city, Johannesburg presents many development challenges. For example, the population is expanding relentlessly, growing by almost 16 per cent last year. Then there is the structure of the city itself, which takes in over 100 informal settlements, where many poor households still lack supporting services and basic amenities. 

It is a source of great pride to City Power and other service providers that the independent audit conducted through the Empowerdex Service Delivery Index ranks Johannesburg as one of the best municipalities in the country in terms of delivering good services to its citizens. The study regularly measures the performance of all of South Africa’s 231 local municipalities, 46 district councils, six metropolitan municipalities and provinces on their service delivery record.

With regard to the delivery of water, sanitation and electricity services, Johannesburg received a score of more than 90 out of 100 in each of these categories and was ranked second overall in the country after Cape Town. The study confirmed the findings of the City's own annual customer satisfaction survey, which reflects a steady growth in satisfaction with service delivery over the last few years.

2010 was an especially important year for Johannesburg and a year in which City Power had an equally high profile. The company was tasked with safeguarding and enhancing the supply of electricity for the facilities that hosted a range of world class sporting events, including the Soccer Confederation Cup of Nations and the Davies Cup tennis series. A reliable electricity supply was pivotal to the success of these events and the reputation of the City.

Last year, City Power had a turnover of R3.726 billion, providing electricity to over 300,000 users. The customer base—which includes prepaid, domestic, agricultural and commercial users—are segmented by demand, from the large power users at the top of the demand pyramid to the broad base at the bottom.

Each segment is characterised by its own distinct requirements; hence for corporate customers, it has been a priority to improve the wire network to reduce outages and power surges. Excellent progress has been made, with over 70 per cent of customers now rating the service as good.

In line with the government's commitment to ensure all South Africans have access to electricity, the introduction of 50 kWh basic free electricity per month has been key to customer satisfaction for residential customers. This means that, irrespective of income, each householder can run two 60 watt lamps and a TV set for four hours per day and still only consume just over half of the free allocation. The Johannesburg programme was one of the first and most ambitious of a series of similar initiatives in South Africa and has brought great benefit to the poorest communities. 

All customers have access to a sophisticated call centre, which manages over 63,000 calls in the peak winter months and provides a single-source service for all queries, applications and payments. Putting in place a strong service ethos, reinforced by regular customer forums and feedback mechanisms, has seen the customer satisfaction index soar.

The most recent results show that the customer satisfaction target of 75 per cent was easily exceeded. The last customer satisfaction survey showed that 80 per cent of key commercial and corporate customers were satisfied with the service, while the satisfaction of domestic consumers was even higher, at 84 per cent.

Some of the highlights of recent achievements include an outstanding health and safety track record with zero fatalities recorded for either employees or the public. Other achievements include the installation of many more new street lights, which the City sees as fundamental for a sense of safety and well-being. Meanwhile the electrification of the poorest parts of the city continues to gain momentum, with many more new customers being added to the network.

City Power sees itself as a progressive and dynamic employer, focused on providing the best working environment in the industry and operating at consistently high levels of productivity. All employees enjoy retirement fund and medical aid benefits and the new employee wellness clinic has adopted a pioneering approach towards HIV and AIDS prevention.

Cutting-edge human resources practices and policies have positioned City Power as a preferred employer in Johannesburg. This has enabled the company to attract some of South Africa’s most talented people, as well as to achieve outstanding results in promoting gender equity and black economic empowerment (BEE) within the workforce.

Looking towards the future, City Power is now committed to improving its responsiveness to faults. Said then-managing director, Silas Zimu, in the last company report: “Unfortunately there are some targets that we were unable to meet specifically in the area of call answering times and responsiveness in the restoration of faults within 1.5 hours. These areas of non performance are attributable to environmental and operational issues which include limited call centre capacity, skills shortage, traffic congestion and budgetary constraints.”

In 2011, City Power is also clearly committed to deepening its environmental strategy, which forms an integral part of its mission statement. The company recently achieved stage one of ISO 9001:2008, the next challenge being to achieve full accreditation. www.citypower.co.za