Anyone who has ever been frustrated by bureaucratic bungling will applaud the plucky action taken yesterday by Jose Olivier of North Warne Avenue, Westville.
Driven to breaking point after endless queues and eight days of broken promises, he staged a sit-in at the offices of the Durban Metro Electricity Department in Masabalala Yengwa (NMR) Avenue, and refused to leave until they finally connected his electricity.
The Sunday Tribune received a call at 9am from Olivier, who said he had spent 19 hours at the department since Friday, February 25, being offered empty assurances over eight days that his electricity would be connected. “I am not budging from this room until the supervisor, Kay Padayachee, sorts this matter out,” he said. “I told her I’d been forced to call the media and she said: ‘Let them come.’
“When I got here today I found they had not even got round to putting my requisition in the system – after taking my money eight days ago.”
Olivier, a consulting engineer, moved from Ladysmith to Westville on February 24, and received assurances from the rental agent that his new home would have electricity by the time he arrived. Finding the house in darkness, he was forced to take his wheelchair-bound, 84-year-old mother to stay with friends.
In the ensuing days he spent every available moment at the electricity department, cajoling, pleading, and eventually threatening.
When the Tribune arrived at the offices, the supervisor, her second-in-command, Dean Pillay, and several other office workers locked themselves in a back room to avoid the media. Finally Pillay invited Olivier into his office and said he would call a technician to make the connection in Westville “within 20 minutes”.
Three-quarters of an hour later the drama came to an end when a relative of Olivier’s reported that the lights had gone on in his home.
As the employees scuttled for their cars at 1pm, instead of the habitual Saturday knock-off time of 11.30am, a jubilant Olivier said he was going home to pop some celebratory champagne into his now functional fridge. - Sunday Tribune