Resident frustrated by open power boxes

I live in Alberton in the New Redruth area. On August 8 the RECORD published on page six an article about electrical boxes that need to be fixed.

Four years ago, and then again three years ago, I went and spent time at the municipality to report and resolve this issue with the manager at the electricity office. I was promised that the department was busy with a project to change the type of boxes and make them secure but, obviously, nothing was done.

At the time I stressed that children walked on pavements, and also inadvertently adults may be electrocuted, and therefore this issue was urgent. I pointed out that several times I installed locks and left the keys with their office to allow reading the meters, but then I was told that all I did was irrelevant since the municipality makes use of contractors to read meters, and they would rather break the locks as they did several times to my locks. They care little about matters of security and do not take or accept any accountability. The municipality blames the contractors and the contractors blame the municipality.

Municipality management and control of contractors is a joke. We all pay for these services, but no one monitors the kind of service quality we receive.

Anonymous – Alberton

Themba Gadebe, EMM spokesperson commented as follows:

With reference to the above, please note that the issue of open electrical enclosures remains a big concern for the city. Instances of vandalism occur across the CoE where boxes are physically broken into for various reasons. The city is replacing older enclosures with protective structures that have electronic locking mechanisms but due to a large number of existing enclosures, it is rolled out as multi-year projects across the city.

On residents locking meters, kindly note the meter reading contractors require access to it for meter readings and the city’s energy department requires 24-hour access to all electrical enclosures and therefore a private lock is not allowed.

The city will require the address or location of this open enclosure in order to close it again.

Once the specific box is identified, it will be secured. Other options will also be pursued to eliminate the need for access and/or to replace the structure with a protective structure.

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