BILLING CRISIS: City Power cuts electricity to NGOs serving thousands of vulnerable children

City Power technicians, accompanied by two police officers, cut electricity to Johannesburg’s historic Children’s Memorial Institute campus on Thursday morning, escalating a R44-million municipal billing dispute with consequences far beyond the precinct’s buildings.

The campus now relies on emergency generators at a fuel cost of about R30,000 a day, according to Dr Dee Blackie, a child-protection researcher and CMI’s pro bono campus manager. The power cut affects 22 child-care non-profit organizations, special-needs education facilities and an industrial provincial laundry.

That laundry processes sterile linen for operating theatres, emergency rooms and acute wards at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, Helen Joseph Hospital, Yusuf Dadoo Hospital and Discovery Hospital. Thirteen clinics and regional health facilities also depend on the service, putting infection-control operations at risk.

The outage has disrupted services for hundreds of children at the Johannesburg School for Autism, where 365 learners face disabled elevator access and the loss of sensory therapy equipment. Afrika Tikkun, which provides daily care and two hot meals to 700 children, is operating under severe constraints. Another 1,000 children in after-care and therapy programs have lost access to support, supervision and, in some cases, their only solid meal of the day.

CMI’s early-childhood centers, serving 60 children, are struggling to prepare food. Childline South Africa’s crisis call capacity has fallen from about 800 calls a day to 250 on backup cellular systems. Emergency dental treatment for children with acute pain and sepsis has stopped, while specialized care and meal services for 18 children at the Bophelo Cerebral Palsy Daycare Centre have been severely compromised.

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The power cut immediately threatens daily care, education and feeding schemes for thousands of vulnerable and neurodiverse children across the precinct.