Eskom doesn't care about human suffering!

I write this review in an absolute rage as to how a business can destroy lives with no repercussions at all. We have had the misfortune to live a in complex in Fourways for the last 15 years. Since day one we have had an Eskom problem with a breaker & transformer in the substation located in Pine Road. Time and time again the supply has gone off for hours on end. Your call centre number didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now. When you do get through, they are clueless despite maintenance staff having cell phones. Their answer to our (not their) problem is take your wife to a hospital, which I will elucidate on later on in my diatribe. Eskom then built a new substation at Steyn City, some 3 to 4 kms away, and believe it or not the problem transferred and still manifested itself in our complex & residential block. Eventually I contacted NERSA who referred the matter to your Executive Office. Despite a detailed explanation and a flurry of emails it went nowhere as there wasn’t anybody that could comprehend the issue. An aggravating factor was that load shedding then became a reality on top of the transformer issues at Steyn City. A couple of years into Fourways and my wife was diagnosed with a terminal lung condition in all probability caused by the poison that Eskom is allowed to legal pump into the atmosphere on a daily basis. She has been on a host of meds and an oxygen concentrator for many years, which started with 4 to 6 hours daily and has progressed to 24 hours a day. Due to Eskom’s inability to stick to its own schedule and a regular disproportionate allocation of switch-offs in our area (Kagiso only gets 30mins at a time very seldomly; Paulshof never seems to be really affected; George 2 hours bouts at a time) which normally totals 4 hours 30mins, we have had to get a portable oxygen machine with limited capacity. As load shedding has got worse so we had to get oxygen tanks also with limited capacity. Finally, it was an inverter all at extra expense. In total my wife’s medical & related expenses total between R15000 to R20000 a month. This all when I should be enjoying the fruits of 45 years of work in retirement, which I cannot. I will never be able to quantify our stress & suffering when alarms go off, especially at night due to Eskom’s incompetence and total disregard for people, and not knowing when it will come back due to schedule unreliability and if there will be enough time to recharge the portable and the inverter. All I hear is business is taking strain, apology after apology, we are working on the problem, et al but no solution is forthcoming as the government and Eskom is unable and unwilling to address what, in my humble opinion, is the elephant in the room - people! I find it quite unbelievable that during Eskom’s long demise to where it is today, is that the blame is laid at everybody else’s door, other than employees own sheer inability to manage electricity. In addition, not one labourer; not one driver; not one clerk; not one technician; not one engineer; not one middle manager, not one anybody has ever had the decency to apologise to the country for what was allowed to happen right under everybody’s noses. Their absolute contempt for the public was displayed when a previous ******* CEO was allowed to return under a cloud. Why am I putting this on HelloPeter.com now because we have just been informed that other than a load shedding bout scheduled for Tuesday morning 18th February from 4am to 8:30 we are scheduled to have a transformer shut down for maintenance from 08:00 until 16:00. That with Mondays 12 to 16:30 is a period of 17 hours for which we are unable to accommodate. So, I will have to miss a day’s work, organise an additional oxygen tank or two and watch my wife suffer in silence while life goes on normally at Eskom. In addition, as we had no electricity on Saturday pm, I went for a takeaway and on enquiring if they had load shedding I was advised that they have been put on a business connection that doesn’t have load shedding. Since when is business more important than human suffering? Does Eskom care - NO! As long as your overpaid; overstaffed; underworked employees can enjoy the average R700k a year …I’m ok Jack and ****** South Africa! If I had it in me, I would sue Eskom for every penny I could, but I don’t have the means and no amount money will compensate my wife for her suffering. I hope all Eskom employees & Government apologist go to bed at night and pat themselves on the back for a job well done!