Tedstoneville economy suffers because of power outages
Residents pointed out that the Jacoba Street Mini-Substation is the problem.
Tedstoneville residents and business owners blame the City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) for losing business due to continuous electricity outages in the area.
Business owners have been suffering by not generating a profit and being forced to halt production because of power outages.
Residents pointed out that the Jacoba Street Mini-Substation is the problem.
According to Commercial Welding & Wear Parts manager Lucille Mioch, CoE has been failing to maintain and provide the quality of services they expect.
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She said they are struggling to have a continued manufacturing business when the electricity is out.
“When the electricity cuts off, we are losing business and the employees do not have working hours nor income,” said Mioch.
“The city has failed to maintain our substations for the past five years. We have been having these electricity problems, and it’s not loadshedding.
“In any given week the electricity can go out for about two days, which means 48 hours of no production on the plant. No one is compensating us for the loss – our machines need to work.
“Some of the workers here have been working here for almost 27 years. Imagine having to retrench them because of electricity failures the city is responsible to fix.
“By month-end we must pay our bills to the CoE for the services they provide. As business operators we are feeling the blow.”
Her husband and colleague, Clinton, demonstrated how easy it is to access the substation because it is not locked.
“We put our own padlocks on the substation and distribute the keys among ourselves in the community. The CoE engineers replaced them with their own to access the substations at their own time but now people always come to steal parts from the substation,” said Mioch.
“The station is always left open, which often leads to having some of the fuses stolen. When we had our locks, we never had these incidents.”
Natalie Olivier from Patch Tech said they spend at least R700 for fuel per day to use a generator when the electricity cuts.
“The generators are not connected to every machine we use for production. We ultimately lose out.”
Olivier also emphasised the issue of security in the area.
She said, “The alarms and the CCTV camera cannot work without electricity because they are not connected to the generators, neither is the electric fence.”
Producer of dairy products Grants Dairy is also affected by the electricity cuts in the area, forcing them to close shop sometimes.
Wesley Grants, Grants Dairy manager, said he is losing business because dairy products cannot be sold once they have gone sour.
“Within the past four weeks we have had power cuts on Mondays and it is usually for two to three hours a day,” said Grants.
He added they are now looking to venture into business models that will not be solely relying on refrigerators.
GCN send a request for comment to CoE on May 17, requesting comment by May 21.
At the time of going to print, no comment was received.
Contact the newsroom by emailing: Marietta Lombard (Editor) germistoncitynews@caxton.co.za, or (Journalists) Busi Vilakazi busiv@caxton.co.za
