Residents in more than nine Boksburg suburbs have been without electricity for almost 40 hours following a power failure many attributed to a faulty underground electric line.
Based on information gathered so far, Ekurhuleni technicians have since Wednesday been on-site fixing the faulty line, but it’s still unclear as to when will supplies be restored to the remaining areas connected to the power grid.
Among the affected areas are Sunward Park, Parkrand, Libradene, Farrar Park, Cinderella, Freeway Park, Elsburg, Boksburg Prision, Groeneweide and Klippoortjie.
Affected residents took to social media to express their frustrations. Ward 32 Clr Marius de Vos criticised the Ekurhuleni Energy Department’s apparent lack of response to the councillors.
“I’ve been trying to get feedback from the metro but it seems they do not care about the inconvenience the power outage is causing.
“Information obtained from the technicians suggests that an issue with an underground electric line caused the power failure on Wednesday evening, plunging the residents into darkness,” explained de Vos.
“I have also just discovered that the faulty cable is almost five decades old, so aging infrastructure could be one of the factors leading to failures, which result in sporadic power outages in the areas,” said de Vos.
The metro’s Department of Communications and Brand Management posted on a Boksburg community Facebook group saying: “Just confirmed by standby that cables was stolen between sub 13 and sub 111. Boksburg Prison, Groeneweide and Klippoortjie areas off because of cable theft.”
The metro recently noted in a statement that the mushrooming illegal connections and other theft-related activities on infrastructure continues to be the leading cause for the sporadic a prolonged electricity interruption, which leave many communities without power for hours and sometimes days.
Interventions to sort our power outages in Ekurhuleni
The mayor of Ekurhuleni, Mzwandile Masina, recently announced a list of extraordinary measures intended to deal with the persistent spate of power outages across Ekurhuleni.
As part of the interventions the metro said would be implemented under the project name, Power to the People, a team of officials called energy champions was formed. The team consists of members of the Mayoral Committee, who have been appointed to act as energy champions across the City.
What residents said on Facebook about the blackout?
Melissa Jacobs: Boksburg without electricity for 37 hours. What is priority here?
Louise Oosthuizen: No resolution time.
Carmen Schroeder: This is nonsense. Is it a stolen cable or cable faults? They need to decide.
Aldilize Gray: Just want to know, are the idiots still alive? How about they install cables that will shock the idiots to oblivion. So sick and tired of this, and it is always the same excuses. Would love to pack up and move elsewhere. The amount of constant cable theft is ridiculous. Seriously had enough. How must you work from home, how must children do online schooling and how must you feed those who need to go to school?
Aldilize Gray: Seriously starting to think thieves are employed to do this. Then the fact that we have to deal with loadshedding due to incompetence.
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