Tshwane Mayor Nasiphi Moya believes the municipality is making inroads in terms of improving public lighting in various areas after at least 9 471 street lights were repaired and replaced since October.
She praised efforts by municipal workers to repair faulty street lights, saying it will continue over the festive season, focusing on vandalised high-mast lights.
“In terms of street lights, we had set a target of increasing the number of functional lights by 10%,” she said.
Moya’s predecessor Cilliers Brink had identified poor public lighting in Tshwane as a threat to safety of communities who become vulnerable to criminals in areas where street lights are faulty.
Through an urban management programme, Brink’s administration embarked on fixing public lighting on the main routes of Soshanguve in July, but at least 1000 street lights were stripped and stolen just a day after they were repaired.
Moya said the mayoral executive is pleased that officials have been hard at work repairing street lights, eradicating water leaks and reducing power interruptions.
“Our streets are cleaner and our war against by-law infringement is showing positive results,” she said.
She said seven regional operations centres will have eradicated water leak backlogs by the end of December 2024, with an overall reduction of 1 689 leaks since the start of the 100-day action plan.
“On reducing electricity distribution issues – 90% of which are cable faults – we have seen an overall reduction of 35% and have already exceeded our 100-day action plan target with 7%,” she said.
In terms of pothole repair backlogs, she said, her executive committee has monitored a 77% reduction in the repair of reported potholes.
“Our officials have also worked to reduce the standard response time to potholes that must be completed within seven days. We are currently at 43% of that target,” she said.
According to her, backlogs of reported pothole repairs are expected to be cleared at the end of December 2024.
“We encourage residents to continue to report potholes as we work to improve the standard response time,” Moya said.
She reported that the AI Soshanguve substation, which has experienced continuous outages for years, is undergoing maintenance work.
The upgrades, which includes replacing switch-gears and overhauling transformers, are expected to be completed by the end of January 2025.
Moya said: “Other progress to substations includes upgrades to the Njala-Waltloo powerline and efforts to stabilise the supply from Rosslyn substation, which is critical to the Rosslyn business district.”
She said the R24 million project is on track and is expected to be completed by the end of January next year.
“We are encouraged by the performance we have seen and will continue to improve service delivery for all residents,” she said.
Pretoria News