KNYSNA NEWS - Residents all over Knysna were literally left in the dark last week when they were told ''the system is down'' as they tried to top up their prepaid electricity meters. Many whose power supply had expired, queued up at pay points across town expressing frustration and anger at being left with neither electricity nor any form of recourse to rectify the situation.

The problem affected Knysna for much of last week when the electricity payment was only available intermittently for at least five days.

This resulted in long queues when the service was online at the handful of outlets selling prepaid electricity to consumers.

One resident told Knysna-Plett Herald (KPH) that if the municipality enforces the use of prepaid electricity meters, they should ensure that electricity is available to be purchased. "How can they force us to change to this system and have absolutely no control over the system? That's outrageous," one resident told KPH, after phoning the municipality's emergency line and being told there was nothing they could do to help.

'Nothing we could do'
East End Kwikspar manager Chris Moonie said he drove from Lamco in Hornlee right across town, stopping at every place where electricity was sold, but everyone was offline. “Many customers were frustrated but there was nothing we could do about it. It affected us for at least five days,” he said.

Management at Game expressed similar sentiments, saying that the problem took days to sort out. A cashier at Pick n Pay said they struggled to sell electricity for at least six days. “Our system was offline for almost a week, with intermittent periods of coming online again. People were angry.”

Local resident Shaheen Limbada said that he also struggled for at least three days to purchase electricity as most vendors claimed to be offline.

“Why is there no contingency plan, like an alternative avenue to purchase electricity should this occurrence happen again?” he asked.

Knysna Municipality disputed claims that the electricity was offline for several days, and stated that vendors were only offline for a couple of hours over the weekend. They confirmed that Ontec is the service provider.

Maintenance work the root cause'
“The root cause of the unavailability experienced was maintenance work that was carried out on a portion of the electrical networks into, and within the industry standard data centre where the service provider hosts its vending systems. Ontec was not made aware of the maintenance work until several hours after it had negatively impacted on the municipality and customers,” reads a statement from the municipality.

“This incident was a very rare exception to the rule and the vending system is online 24 hours daily, seven days a week. Ontec reiterated a commitment to deliver impeccable service and value to Knysna Municipality and its end consumers. We apologise for the inconvenience this incident has caused to our residents,” concluded the statement.

When asked directly to comment, Ontec released a statement apologising to the Knysna community and municipality for the inconvenience caused. “We view this incident in a very serious light and have accordingly investigated the matter in order to put additional controls in place to ensure there is no reoccurrence of this type of incident in the future.”

Ontec did not indicate what contingency plans would be put in place should a similar incident occur in the future.

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