City Power battles outages and angry mobs of community members in Alexandra
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena has warned residents of Alexandra the power entity will not hesitate to withdraw its labour force if their safety is threatened and this may negatively affect even other outages deep in the township.
City Power has cautioned against the actions of some community members who are protesting over power outages and blocking the depot and the substation.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the protests, which have blocked the roads, mean that ‘our technicians and operators are not able to respond to other outages across the Alex Service Delivery Centre area’.
The protests are over the recent outages that have been affecting residents of the Far East Bank and Tsutsumani areas since the weekend and Mangena said they were due to multiple cable faults experienced in the past few days, affecting most areas around Alexandra.
He said there were two distributors that failed due to a cable fault at the Alexandra substation, in the Far East Bank 11kv and Kite/ Rooth. The Far East Bank distributor tripped on Sunday [April 16], and the test branch is currently on-site to locate the fault before repairs could be done and power restored.
This affects 20th to 22nd avenues towards London Road, and 13th to 16th avenues between Roosevelt and London Road. The problem with Kite/Rooth standby distributor is exacerbated by the discovery of the theft of about 40m of cable stolen in the area. This affects power to Tsutsumani, Far East Bank, West Bank, and 12th to 16th avenues, among others, Mangena said.
Alex delivery centre general manager Lerato Kgalema addressed the community and teams, including the contractor, who have been escorted to the site to try and work on these outages and urged the community to allow the power utility workers to safely restore the power.
Mangena warned that the power entity will not hesitate to withdraw labour if their safety is threatened and this if carried out, will unfortunately affect even other outages, including deep in Alexandra.
“We are committed to ensuring that repairs are done as quickly as possible. We also plead with the community to remain calm and cooperate to ensure speedy resolution of the problems encountered,” Mangena said, and added: “We will continue to engage the councillors for long-term solutions to these problems across Alexandra.”
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