Overgrown vegetation causes power outages in Gillitts

GILLITTS residents experienced power shortages for six days last week, which lasted more than several hours at a time

According to Veronica Naraindass of Zinnia Road in Gillitts, residents were left without electricity from Saturday 27 September. The power switched off and on for several hours up until Friday 3 October.

“Some days we had no electricity for 24 hours. Every time I called the Electricity Faults Department, I was told that the technicians were still being dispatched. They never explained what the fault was, but kept giving me reference numbers all week,” said Naraindass.

She said most residents complained about food stored in the freezer being spoilt, while others complained that it was impossible to conduct any business from home.

Suren Madhan, operations manager for network control at eThekwini Electricity said parts of Gillitts had been affected by outages due to vegetation that have come into contact with the 11 kV overhead mains circuit, which was further compounded by the recent inclement weather.

“Mr Xolani Nyembe the western depot manager had arranged teams to conduct tree cutting in the affected area. This was completed on Friday 3 October and all supply was restored at 5pm. We can confirm that the situation has since been normalized. None of the outages were attributed to any form of sabotage or load shedding,” said Madhan.

He said the eThekwini Electricity team sincerely apologised for the inconvenience and reassured consumers that they strive to provide all consumers with an acceptable quality of supply and endeavour to reduce outages to a minimum.

Meanwhile, Naraindass and other residents said they are hoping to claim costs for inconvenience caused during the power outage.