City takes proactive measures to curb power failures in Alberton

The City of Ekurhuleni’s energy department is yet to proactively install alarm systems in its primary substations as well as its secondary substations including early-warning devices on major cables.

This announcement was made during a public meeting held at the Alberton Civic Centre’s Council Chambers on February 5. The meeting was attended by exactly 60 concerned locals.

Chaired by Member of Parliament Tsholofelo Bodlani, the meeting tackled burning issues around power outages and ways to curb power failures. Locals also had an opportunity to table their grievances to the City’s representative and dignitaries.

These power outages and failures, which have been ongoing for years, have left many adversely affected with some businesses threatening to leave Alberton as a result.

Several business owners, who were at their wits’ end after receiving what is described as inadequate service delivery, also demanded proper communication from the CoE’s communication channels.

Acting area chief engineer, Dylan Schroeder, said the main issues that the energy department is dealing with are power failures.

“These can be divided into two main groups, first where we have third party interference and secondly where we have normal equipment power failures. Theft and vandalism are rife in the City, not just in Alberton. There are hotspots identified within Alberton and it looks like Alberton North is one of them,” he said.

In light of interferences, Schroeder said they do have the support of the EMPD in investigating and building cases of major incidents.

WATCH: Prolonged Alberton power cuts trigger protest

“Unfortunately, we can’t keep up with the rate of vandalism because we are constrained by the budget as to how quickly we can install the early warning devices and alarm systems. Another proactive measure we are doing is installing protective measures, such as an armoured door,” he said.

He also assured that they are looking at other substations to upgrade. These upgrades include adding more transformers and adding cables to assist the network going forward to stabilise the network.

Contributing factors

Phakamile Mbengashe, spokesperson for the executive mayor, reiterated that the recent cable faults in Alberton are not solely attributed to the ageing of cables.

“The bulk of the cable faults are due to third party interference in the form of theft, vandalism, illegal connections and damage by third-party service providers, such as internet fibre contractors excavating and damaging cables. A contributing factor is the ingress of water, especially now that we are experiencing extremely high levels of rainfall,” he said.

Eskom load-shedding, according to Mbengashe, is also putting strain on cables due to high inrush currents during the process of restoring the power supply.

The energy department plans to upgrade such equipment through network enhancement and refurbishment projects in line with approved budgets.

“The department has already contracted security service providers and has rolled out new technology to curb the vandalism and theft on the electricity assets,” said Mbengashe.

During his address, MMC for Finance Economic Development Graham Gersbach, said: “The majority of our suburban customers are well over 95% payment levels and the major of our businesses pay between at 93 and 100%. The first problem is that we have funded posts that aren’t filled and we are doing everything we can to get that going.”

WATCH: Prolonged Alberton power cuts trigger protest

The multi-party coalition government is investigating new models for communicating on service delivery issues with residents.

Several people made it clear on various community WhatsApp groups that they are not satisfied with the outcome of the meeting since no real feedback and no proper solutions were forthcoming.