Alberton North hit by more power outages

Large parts of the Northern regions of Alberton were without power for four days. The power outage started on June 1 and all regions were restored by June 5.

The RECORD spoke to local ward councillor Tiaan Kotze to understand the reasons behind the outage and the time it took to be restored.

According to Kotze the reasons for the outage cannot at this stage be definitively proved. A damaged cable was, however, worked on on June 3 in the Parklands area. This cable was damaged by previous digging in the area.

According to Kotze it seems that this digging was in connection with fibre cables being installed around a year ago.

He went on to say that feedback from the city manager manager indicated that the way leave forms related to this would be investigated further.

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Limited manpower

The turnaround time of four days had several contributing factors that led to the long time it took for restorations to be completed according to Kotze.

The lockdown has been a contributing factor due to the limited amount of manpower available. The lockdown has caused a shortage of teams from the city as well as a shortage of available contractors. A further problem was that several of the mini substations around the city were welded shut. This was done to help prevent criminals from getting access to the substations.

According to Kotze after these were welded shut the number of thefts from these substations have decreased substantially. This, however, increased the time taken to access the substations.

The city has also recently experienced a strike by the workers of the energy department regarding overtime.
Kotze said he does not know if this contributed to the issue, but it might be a possibility.

ALSO READ: Electricity issues Alberton North area

Call centre ‘offline’

A large problem Kotze identified with the response to the outage is that the call center, where issues need to be reported, is not working.

This has caused residents to be not able to report the issue as well as not having access to information regarding the issue from the municipality.

Kotze advised anyone that has a power outage to follow the following steps:

• Residents should first check their DB boxes to see if the power has tripped there.
• If there is no problem residents must report the issue to the municipality.
• This can be done by phoning the call center at 086 054 3000, contacting them via twitter @CoE_Call_Centre, using the My Ekurhuleni app.
• The city’s turnaround time is estimated at 48 hours following the reporting of the incident.

ALSO READ: Electricity issues Alberton North area