Suburban
Michael Laban
My telephone is not working again. And I think I will just forget it now. I used to spend more time at the office reporting faults (it did not often work), than paying bills. And certainly the majority of my bill was monthly rental, not calls made. I would go for a while with no phone and not know it, as no one ever phoned me, and I never phoned anywhere, so it could be months before I knew it did not work.
So now, I am thinking I will not go up to the office, to report a fault or to pay my bill. After all, what can they do, cut me off?
But one must wonder, are they not concerned? Are they not protesting to their Unions? Are the Unions not doing anything about it? We hear nothing. Heads get good salaries, and new cars, but workers have no means to get to the call outs, have no material to fix them with, which can only mean the “Service Provider” will collapse and they will all lose their jobs. Now the point of a Union is collective bargaining and protection of their members (and their members’ jobs must be high on the list of what is to be protected!), so why are the Unions not making some noise? Get the general populace on their side. Inform everyone of the problem. Shrink the management-worker pay gap. Blow the whistle on management corruption. Promote good business practice. Get the Service Provider to provide a good service and keep customers, ensure income, and keep the wages (and union dues) flowing? Or do the Unions not know their business either?
There are other options — if TelOne is not giving me service, I can use mobile phones, email, What’s App, FaceBook, Twitter, and more. I am not going to be outside of communications!
Zesa seems to be in a similar situation. While the overcast and rainy weather is playing havoc with my solar system, all I need to do is buy and put up more panels.
Then I will have more electrical power (or hot water from my solar geyser!), even if Cyclone Eloise comes over. If I buy more KWh from ZESA (or ZETDC, or ZPC, or whoever), I have no assurance I will get more power.
First, I have no idea if I can buy more power. I go to the vendor in my local shop and, “the network is down”. I go on the internet, and’ “that portal is offline”. I go to Ecocash, and if I am lucky I get through, the money goes from my account, but I do not receive any token to plug into my pre-paid meter.
Second, now that I have 623 KWh in credit, says my meter, I and all my neighbours have no power.
There is some tree on some line in the neighbourhood. There is water getting into the underground cable. The sub-station has blown a fuse.
And no wonder, with so many sub-stations burnt out, all the rest are grossly over loaded. Our sub-station, beside Avondale Primary School on King George Road, burnt out (burnt up! The flames were five meters high and there is nothing left except the security fence around where it used to be) well over a year ago. Nothing has ever been replaced. So one must conclude either the sub-station was surplus and never needed to be built in the first place, or every other sub-station in the area is overloaded. So this again is a management problem. Transformers and sub-stations burn out and blow. There needs to be a constant inflow and stock of new parts and materials.
There needs to be constant funding allocated to repair and replacement.
Until there is an overstock of that, there should be no funds going to management vehicles, and if it is not happening, there should be no funds flowing to management salaries.
Anymore than management should be paid before all the workers! I know how it works. If I do not have funds to replace my solar system batteries when they fail in five years, I know I have no funds to buy another motorbike.
And again the Unions – do they not know their job? How can they protect their working members’ jobs if they are not pointing out bad business practices, corruption, and the other major factors that are leading to the death of their service industry?
Or are they equally committed to ‘punish the poor’ policies?
The rich (are there any rich people in Avondale?) can afford alternatives. Cell phones, courier services, internet, solar systems . . . all these cost money. So when the basic, provided, national, service fails, the rich have a way, and some means, to get by. But the poor?
The author Michael Laban is a resident of Ward 7 in Avondale.
