During his visit to the Marikana informal settlement, Masina warned the community to stop using illegal connections as it endangers innocent lives.
“These illegal connections are a threat to innocent lives while at the same time they overload the system and result in many unplanned power outages.
Read: Illegal connections cut off
“In some instances, they result in massive electricity infrastructure damage and thus derail our electricity roll-out programme,” he said.
He further appealed to the community to work with the municipality to prevent electricity theft.
Masina explained how the city was losing an estimated R800 million annually in unaccounted energy, which is a huge problem and setback.
Read: Stop illegal connections to save lives
He also shared that the city has plans to electrify all informal settlements in the next five years, and Winnie Mandela was the first area to benefit from this initiative.
Another topic he touched on as he spoke to locals was that the city is in the process of rolling out 100 000 houses in the next five years, to help in speedily resolving the human settlements challenges in Tsakane Extension 10.
