Power surges worsen Dinwiddie’s woes
“We constantly live in anxiety because we never know when we will have no power.”
Dinwiddie residents still suffer from power outages and say the City of Ekurhuleni is taking its time to help them.
Just over two weeks ago, a few houses in Dinwiddie had no power for 10 days.
After restoring the power, other problems developed.
The affected residents now experience power surges.
Langdale Road resident Wendy Tolkin said the power surges had damaged appliances.
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“We have lost several appliances and gadgets. It is not fair because we already lost groceries from the 10 days.
Now, we have also lost appliances and not only that, my gate motor and alarm system were damaged, which compromises my safety,” said Tolkin.
She said the CoE does not care about the residents because it takes its time to attend to power issues while they suffer.
“It is just emotionally taxing. We live in anxiety because we never know when we will have no power.
“We can handle load-shedding because you can plan for it, but with what we are experiencing, there is no way to plan for it,” said Tolkin.
GCN sent an enquiry to the city, questioning a turnaround time.
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“The city attended to multiple network faults affecting Dinwiddie and surrounding areas. Among the faults was a medium-voltage cable failure that takes time to locate, open and repair,” said CoE spokesperson Zweli Dlamini.
He said load-shedding strains the distribution network.
“CoE customers are requested to switch off geysers and appliances to reduce the load when circuits are switched on after load-shedding.
“Unfortunately, load-shedding provides an opportunity for theft and vandalism on the network. Residents should report suspicious activities to the call centre,” said Dlamini.
On the issue of response times, he said it depends on the number of calls.
“The time taken to attend to an outage is impacted by the call volumes and the technicalities of each outage attended by the team.
“The city attends and restores supply in line with the NRS-047 guidelines that state electricity distributors should strive to restore supply of the bulk of calls received within 24 hours, However, where the fault repair process is of a very technical nature, it can be up to 168 hours,” said Dlamini.
