According to Derek Fox of the Chamber, so far they have not heard from Ekurhuleni around the power outage despite their demand or open invitation to let the Chamber’s industry expert have a walk through.
“At a follow-up meeting our industry expert outlined how the system works, and without any feedback from the metro we have to assume we are in deeper trouble than we think,” says Fox.
“According to the expert, there is a duel supply system from Eskom to Ekurhuleni, and a duel supply system out from Ekurhuleni to the market in the event if one of the supply lines are down for maintenance or repairs, then the other continues to supply.
“If the supply line went down and there was no back-up supply line, that would mean that the other supply line is faulty or under maintenance.”
Fox says the Chamber has been made to understand that electrical facilities in the metro are 60 years old, while spare parts are very hard to come by, if at all.
“The circuit-breaker that exploded will have cost upwards of R500 000, so the question is, could this have been avoided?
“Sadly, without anyone form the metro coming back to us, all we can do is speculate on how deep in trouble we are.
“Chamber members, however, are not interested in speculation and are looking for answers.”
