Mapleton told power catastrophe will be improved in one month
Situation has been described as a "crisis"
Within the next month, Mapleton residents should see a turn-around in the power outages which have been crippling the area of late.
This is according to William Olivier, Ekurhuleni chief area engineer, who addressed a community meeting on January 20, where desperate home and business owners gathered to try to find answers and solutions to what they describe as a “crisis” situation.
Representatives of the DA and AfriForum were also present.
Business owner Evie Elliot, who arranged the public meeting, said the state of affairs is a nightmare.
“We have recently been subjected to 27 outages in a month – one lasted 36 hours!
“The distress these persistent power failures is causing residents and businesses is absolutely soul destroying.
“Appliances have had to be replaced. One business owner is on the verge of closing his workshop, we have been running on low voltage much of the time, people have lost tenants in factories and cottages, food has had to be thrown away and generators are costing up to R2 000 per day!”
- Staff
According to Olivier, old infrastructure, lack of staff and social ills are at the root of Mapleton’s problems, as they are in many other areas in Boksburg.
Social ills, he explained, meaning widespread poverty which forces people to steal electrical components, such as cabling and the doors and locks from electrical boxes, to sell to survive.
“The prevalence of illegal connections and theft has an extremely negative impact on our electricity network. Apart from these factors, the tender to continue installing concrete electricity poles has expired, so this will have to be re-tendered for in our new financial year,”
“Tenders are a very long process, unfortunately, and can take up to six months to secure.”
“We also only have four electricians servicing a massive area – Vosloorus, Dawn Park, Villa Liza and Mapleton – with only one of these electricians on standby after hours.”
He advised that councillors pressurise the metro to put additional staff in place to adequately deliver service to residents.
- Interim
In the interim, however, Olivier said work to cut back trees which are affecting power lines, putting spaces on power lines and sorting out the sagging of lines so that they don’t get blown onto each other by wind, will commence.
“A tender is already in place for protective structures on electrical boxes and you have my word Mapleton will be prioritised when we start rolling these out,” said Olivier.
Open and broken electrical boxes is a major problem in the area (and many other parts of Boksburg) but Olivier said the metro can simply not keep up with the huge need for new doors and locks.
“Our budget in this respect is finished,” he explained.
“Please give me a month and we will get the continuous tripping of your power under control. I need to ask you for your patience and understanding – we are committed but under-resourced,” he told Mapleton residents.
Olivier added that the upgrading of Mapleton’s electricity infrastructure is in his five-year plan.
- Compensation
DA Ward 17 councillor Simon Lapping told residents: “The current council loves to show off what’s above ground, not what’s below ground.
“Why? Because what’s above ground looks impressive. The real problems though lie with the below-ground infrastructure, and the ANC council isn’t worried about that.
“It’s time for them to get the basics right if they’re to deliver proper service to the residents of Ekurhuleni”
Residents questioned who will compensate them for the loss of electrical appliances and the cost of running generators.
Olivier made it clear it is up to homeowners to adequately protect their appliances with surge and voltage protectors and to ensure their properties are correctly earthed, or they will not be able to put a claim in against the metro for damages.
While the public meeting seemed to provide the distressed residents with some form of solace, most vented about having to continuously pay for ways to protect themselves against these power outages when council “is doing nothing” to sort the problems out.
“Our electricity crisis has had disastrous consequences for business owners and residents, and the longer it takes to move towards a sustainable supply the worse the situation is going to get!” Elliot concluded.
