CAPITAL: The Voice of Business Issue 1, 2015 | Page 59

ELECTRICITY
and as “a stopgap to ensure that Mkondeni
doesn’t go down while we work on the rest
of the city” This should be completed by
.
February next year.
A new 132 kV substation is also planned
for Eastwood.
Once this first phase is complete the municipality will look at reticulation in the
next phase, said Nomnganga, but pointed
out that when there is a fault in the reticulation part of the network now, they try to
replace rather than repair.
Nomnganga said that R173M had already
been set aside for this upgrade — R123M

from the Department of Energy and R50M
from Msunduzi Municipality — but that
the rest would still need to be found.
“We are looking at getting funding from
different sources, including from the Department of Energy, through private loans
and enhanced revenue collection,” he explained.
Smart meters are one way they intend to
enhance revenue collection, he said, adding that they “intend to focus on large defaulters” He said these smart meters would
.
allow for remote disconnection of nonpayers.

Who is Sabatha Nomnganga?
“WE want to be the best municipality,
second to none.”
These are the stated aspirations of the
current head of electricity at the Msunduzi Municipality, Sabatha Nomnganga, when we asked him what he aims
to achieve in his position.
Nomnganga joined the Msunduzi
Municipality in his current position
from eThekwini Municipality two years
ago.
He comes from a strong technical
background. He started his career with
Eskom in 1996 and then moved to
eThekwini in 1999, where he worked
as a senior protection maintenance
technician, then as a protection engineer, before moving to its electrical workshops, where he tested and
refurbished equipment from 400 V to
132 kV.
Before taking up his present position
at Msunduzi, he was in charge of the
entire western region of eThekwini,
where he oversaw the maintenance
of transformers, electrical switchgear
and other hardware.
He appealed to local business in

“Our response time has
improved and we are looking
at providing better services
into the future.
We are reviving the city,”
Msunduzi to help him and his department attain their goals.
“Help us by working with us,” he
asked. “Try to be understanding when
we have outages and help us by giving
us access when we need to do maintenance.”
He also highlighted the importance
of reporting faults to the municipality’s call centre.
“We assign reference numbers to
each fault report, as this helps us track
faults and their causes for future reference,” he said.
Nomnganga said that great strides
had been made in improving the quality of electricity supply in Msunduzi.
“Our response time has