Shock through the heart
For three months a Brackenhurst resident has been living with taps that could kill her and her children.
BRACKENHURST – Imaging coming home and looking forward to a long relaxing bath but instead you get an electric shock when you turn on the tap.
This has been a Brackenhurst local’s daily experience for close to three months. Her houselights remain dim, large appliances do not work and every time she turns on a tap she receives an electrical shock.
On April 6 an independent electrician investigated the electricity issues at the Brackenhurst residence. During the investigation, the electrician found that “there are two cables from the mini-sub. L-220V and a neutral.
“The neutral gets earthed at the mini-sub. At your residence the earthing gets connected to the neutral from the mini-sub. If the neutral has a loose connection at the mini-sub it causes everything that is neutral / earthed to have 220V power because the circle is now open.
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“Your taps now have a live electricity voltage. At the residence you have drain pipes that connect to the earth. Should there not be any bonding between the water pipes and drain pipes it will lead to 220V electricity flow between the taps and the drain. This will cause fatal electrocution”.
The resident immediately reported the issue to the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality but in three months she has received no resolution to the problem.
“During the past three months I’ve had financial losses due to this issue. I’ve taken several days’ leave to be at the property when an appointment was made by EMM but they never pitched,” says the resident.
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EMM spokesperson Themba Gadebe released the following statement in response: “The EMM’s Energy Department is aware of the problem and a technician was asked to attend to the problem immediately. To permanently repair the fault required access to three houses due to the design of the street.
“We could not manage to have the energy team and the occupants of all three houses together at the same time before. The department did contact the customer and the technicians started with repair work yesterday”.
