A massive power outage hit on Wednesday evening, July 15, and left thousands of residents in the northern part of Boksburg without electricity for more than 45 hours.
The areas plunged into darkness by the outage, many attributed to a faulty underground electric line, included customers in Van Dyk Park, Sunward Park, Parkrand, Libradene, Farrar Park, Cinderella, Freeway Park, Elsburg, Boksburg Prision, Groeneweide and Klippoortjie.
Residents claimed that they were initially told that technicians were doing absolutely everything they could to make repairs as quickly as possible.
However it seems more unexpected issues were encountered while trying to reconnect certain areas. Following days of being completely left in the dark, frustrated residents gathered at the Boksburg Civic Centre to get updates on the restoration, but were not satisfied with the officials’ response.
Protests
They then engaged in sporadic protests against the delays in restoring their power, blockading several roads outside the Boksburg Civic Centre on Friday (July 17) and Saturday evening, while demanding that the mayor, Mzwandile Masina, intervenes in the power crisis.
After the residents’ cry for urgent action, acting MMC of Energy, Clr Lesiba Mpya, arrived on Friday afternoon and gave the affected communities feedback on the matter.
The MMC stated that the department had dispatched another team to help fix the power cables, adding that as a temporal measure, the metro resolved to install an additional cable to supply power in the affected areas in the meantime.
The cable was apparently supposed to be installed by July 18.
Venting
But, according to residents, that promise was broken, and the outage continued into Saturday late evening. That sparked another demonstration which saw residents going back to the streets outside the civic centre where they blockaded the roads as a way of venting their frustrations.
A big cheer went up among some of the protesting customers on Saturday night when Ward 32 Clr Marius de Vos broke the news that crews had finally started to gradually restore power in some of the affected areas on July 18.
According to de Vos, technicians continued to work until all customers have power back by Sunday.
One of the affected residents, CJ van Jaarsveld, complained that at that point, the food in their fridges was going bad, saying losing their food was another blow for the families already struggling to make ends meet.
“We can’t be subjected to this situation, because we are paying for rates and taxes,” van Jaarsveld said.
Andrea Pearson, who has been living in Parkrand for the past 16 years, said electricity problems in their area are now getting worse and she fears that this will cause the value of their properties to depreciate.
The protesters said the outages added another layer of stress to the work-from-home and stay-at-home orders in place, and also affected children who are learning online.
“The ongoing power outages are hitting hard; consider those who are breathing through oxygen machines and people who are working from home. We really want the municipality to take us seriously because we can’t live like this,” Pearson said.
According to residents, this outage was one of many to hit the area, saying it was an ongoing problem, but they don’t remember another blackout of this scale.
The outage reportedly also affected water supply in some areas.
What caused the blackout?
Mpya blamed the blackout on a failure in the underground electric line supplying the affected communities.
Addressing the angry crowd on July 15, the MMC said a fault was picked up on one of the cables supplying power to the affected areas.
“During investigations, it was found that two feeders had tripped. Repairs started in the early hours of July 16, and were completed around 9am. The power, however, tripped again and technicians found there was faulty cable in another spot. Repairs for the second cable began on the same day and were completed the following day at about 11am. But the system tripped again when technicians were trying to switch the power back on,” explained Mypa.
Metro has not done enough
CouncillorsBoth de Vos and Ward 43 Clr Bruce Reid have blamed the sporadic power failures in the area on failure to maintain the power infrastructure.
“The cables running from Les Smit sub-station are almost 50 years old, whereas they are designed to have a lifespan of around 40 years. This cable was installed to handle 60 per cent of the load which was needed 50 years ago. This cable is long overdue for replacement,” said Reid.
He further pointed out that the two affected cables needed to be replaced with a 400mm cable at a cost of approximately R3000 per metre, excluding labour.
“Our rate paying residents deserve better, we have escalated this matter to parliament for urgent intervention,” said Reid.
De Vos said: “It’s a pity that the DA is not in charge of the Ekurhuleni budget but we will make sure that the entire cable gets replaced so that the electricity problems gets solved once and for all. The DA recently pointed out the metro needs to upgrade and fix its equipment so massive outages aren’t the norm going forward.”
