WATCH: Alrode South business owners up in arms
About 50 business owners, who were at their wits’ end, took their frustrations to the Alberton Customer Care Centre on April 12.
The business owners initially gathered in Alrode South and convoyed to Alberton CBD where they picketed outside the Alberton municipal offices.
While chanting with heated emotions, they held up their placards demanding proper service delivery and an end to unplanned power outages.
This was in light of periodic power outages, which have reportedly gone on for years on end, leaving the City of Ekurhuleni’s industrial hubs adversely affected.
WATCH: A video showing Alrode South business owners venting their frustration
They demanded their basic right of proper service delivery and to have their uninterrupted electricity back.
According to organiser Carol Fourie, representing Arrow Branding and Arrow-Chem Alrode South businesses, power outages have affected them drastically.
“There’s still going to be a bigger gathering than this, we want to involve the whole of Alrode South and that will be an even bigger get-together. These power outages go as far back as two years ago and nothing has been done. The picket was also prompted by the fact that most businesses were recently without power for at least a week,” she said.
Fourie said that during their recent outages, none of the companies was able to operate and millions of rands were lost due to these unplanned outages.
Huge losses
An aggravated James Ballard of AA&S Electroplating told the RECORD that the power outages have affected his business severely.
“When the Alberton Customer Care Centre was still Alberton Town Council there was something done, but now everything has gone down south. I’m aggravated because they mostly lie to the public. I had work that was supposed to go to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but I couldn’t do it,” he said.
Another frustrated business owner echoed that these power outages have a rippling effect on their businesses and their employees’ livelihoods.
“We lost seven months of work due to the pandemic and when we finally get work, we are losing seven days because of no power and no feedback. We lost about R350 000 during this space of time due to these outages. It’s also a loss of income for our staff because we’ll have to send them back home,” he said.
Blame those who install fibre
Senior engineer of the CoE David Matjie publicly announced that these outages are mainly caused by the damage done by fibre-installing companies.
“The problems in Alrode South are also caused by cable theft and the damaging of substations. We are looking into getting security to assist us. The people installing fibre cables are a cause of these outages. They dig up streets and damage cables, when it’s raining the cables give us a problem,” Matjie said.
He also extended an apology for the ongoing unplanned outages and assured business owners that he will escalate this matter.
