Residents living in Elsburg and Lille roads in Delville have been experiencing irregular power cuts lately, with no clear reason as to what is causing the outages.
A family living in Elsburg Road told the GCN they began experiencing power cuts during the Easter weekend, this year.
After inquiring with the metro, they were allegedly told the regular power supply cuts were due to the flats around their residences using up most of the voltage provided.
Lizel le Roux, who lives in Lille Road with her husband Johan, said they have been experiencing more nights in the dark since the 34-hour long power supply outage which they experienced on June 26.
However, this was not their first power outage experience which lasted over a day.
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“My husband is 59 years old and suffers from two life-threatening chronic conditions, namely chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and congestive cardiac failure (CCF) and needs oxygen,” she said.
“To be exact, he needs oxygen 16 hours per every 24 hours, and without electricity our lives become difficult.
“Without a generator, transport or finances, you cannot imagine how difficult it is to get a man with less than 37 per cent usage of his heart to a hospital, while he has no breath, turning blue in the face, has no feeling in his legs due to poor blood flow and his mind is shutting down also due to no oxygen.
“It is impossible to get him to hospital, and the metro just does not care.”
For the le Roux household, power outages began in December last year and after noticing that only a handful of houses experienced them they allegedly inquired with councillors and the metro, but their grievances were not responded to.
Le Roux recalled an incident on December 15, 2018, when the power was off for over 48 hours and she was just advised to take her husband to the nearest hospital or fire department and they were given no clear indication of when the power would be restored.
Elderly residents living in Elsburg and Lille roads told the GCN there had been a rapid increase in power outages at night recently, making the winter unbearable, and urged the metro to do a thorough investigation into the cause of the power cuts.
Themba Gadebe, spokesperson for the metro, confirmed that the power outages were not an Eskom issue, but the metro’s.
“There has been a high level of theft of cables, fuses and equipment, and we urge Ekurhuleni customers to report any suspicious activities taking place in the proximity of our cables or mini-substations immediately,” he said.
“Customers can report incidents to the EMPD as soon as they notice suspicious activities.
“If anyone is seen on our network or substations without a marked Ekurhuleni vehicle, the individual should be reported immediately to the EMPD or the area’s CPF for identification.”
Speaking on the daily power outages experienced by residents starting at 6pm and lasting until the following day, he said this issue was caused by overloading on the network due to the theft of copper cables.
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The metro has since replaced the copper cables with aluminium cables.
“In efforts to restructure the electricity distribution, the metro has been rolling out operations to disconnect illegal connections in various areas across the city,” said Gadebe.
“We will do the same operation in Delville on a date that cannot be announced as there might be many cases of electricity theft or meter tampering and bypassing in the area.”
While residents are unhappy about the power supply cuts, they also included complaints about the service rendered by the metro’s call centre.
The metro urged residents to send queries via the My Ekurhuleni App and the metro’s social media pages should they experience issues with the call centre, which remains one of the platforms through which they receive many queries.
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