Frustrated residents of Reiger Park are calling on municipal officials to urgently deal with the electricity crisis in their township, before fed-up residents take matters into their own hands.
Speaking to the Advertiser, legal and paying customers in the area, including their Ward 34 Clr Charlie Crawford, said the township has for the past couple of months been experiencing unplanned power outages due to overloading and infrastructure damages caused by izinyoka (illegal connections).
Complaining residents expressed their shock that the brazen electricity thieves have gone as far as to steal electricity from municipal-owned property, the Reiger Park Civic Centre.
When the Advertiser visited the township, illegally connected electricity cables could be seen running from the electricity box in the civic centre to some of the shacks and old mine hostel in Joe Slovo informal settlement.
Reported
“I’ve been inundated with complaints from residents who are paying for their electricity, and I escalated the matter to the municipality, asking them to take swift action against power thieves in the township. However, they have not done anything to remedy the situation,” said Crawford.
According to Crawford, the illegal connections on the electricity box inside the civic centre and other spots in the township result in overloading, damages to the infrastructure, which constantly plunge the whole area into frequent darkness.
“The power frequently goes out as the network overloads because of too many illegally connected homes in the informal settlement using a network which is designed for a certain number of paying households. In some cases the boxes explode because izinyoka have bypassed the installed fuses or circuit breakers that switch off when the load gets to dangerous levels, thus preventing the transformer from exploding. Not only are this damaged transformers costly to repair or replace, but they take hours or days to repair,” explained Crawford.
Broken promise
The councillor reiterated that part of the problem is that the City of Ekurhuleni has broken its promise to electrify all informal settlements in the City.
“A lot of promises we made to the community of Slovo during the mayoral election campaigns in Ekurhuleni, but none of them have been kept. These promises include re-blocking and providing legal connections to the informal settlements,” said Crawford.
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Lack of action
One of the residents of the embattled community, who asked not to be named, lamented the lack of actions to deal with illegal connections in the area.
“We are forced to contend with frequent power cuts because of electricity theft, and intimidation by the perpetrators. No, the situation had long become unbearable. To avoid clashes over electricity between us, paying residents and the informal settlement, we are pleading with the municipality to use the available resources to intervene over illegal power theft here,” said the resident.
Security unequipped
The resident also questioned the logic of paying a contractor millions of rand to safeguard the civic centre, but thieves arrive and do as they please.
Under conditions of anonymity, one of the security personnel, however, told this publication that they are not equipped to deal with violent criminals who are invading the facility, adding that the power thieves have on numerous occasions threatened to kill them if they interfere.
“We are not armed, our lives are in danger, and we reported this to our superior many times, but nothing has changed,” said the personnel.
Citywide problem
The City of Ekurhuleni has faced various power outages in recent months, which have been attributed by both the city and Eskom to various problems, including illegal connections, meter bypass and cable theft, which result in substation failures and other technical problems.
The metro recently issued a statement saying the cost of repairs to cables, mini substations, pole mounted transformers, overhead lines, circuit breakers, fuses and substation equipment range between R5-million and R7-m per annum excluding refurbishment, revenue enhancement and network enhancement costs. This is in addition to over R60-m estimated loss of revenue due to bypassed electricity meters.
Clashes
A few years ago, residents of Reiger Park held a number of demonstrations, blocking several streets in the township with burning tyres and rocks in protest against the then constant power outages caused by cable and electricity theft in the area. They also engaged in war with the residents of Joe Slovo informal settlement over theft of electricity in the township.
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