Tswelopele residents without electricity for months
Some residents of Tswelopele have been without electricity for over a year.
Residents of Tswelopele, Thembisa, have been without electricity for months without a light of hope at the end of the tunnel.
According to community chairperson Fortune Makgotla, residents in surrounding areas have also alleged to be without electricity for months.
“Some people have had no electricity for about 16 months while others for two months without any explanation,” said Makgotla.
Makgotla said they have approached Winnie Mandela customer care centre in Tswelopele numerous times about their complaints regarding electricity and on several occasions, they are either referred to other departments or told that the matter will be looked into.
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“We expected them to come to the community to check our metre boxes and cables, but they didn’t,” said Makgotla.
The chairperson alleged that the department only checked for problems and audited each house on their system, which didn’t make sense to the community because each house would have a different energy consumption.
“They claimed that residents had exceeded the electricity capacity and that the majority were using more power than they had paid for,” he explained.
The community’s frustrations resulted in them taking to the streets of Tswelopele to march to the care centre with hopes of forcing the department or Eskom to take their grievances seriously.
“On arrival at the centre, we were told that we have to pay fines and that they would only put in transformers after we have done this,” explained Makgotla.
Boitumelo Letsatsi, Eskom customer relations manager in Ekurhuleni, said: “We heard their grievances and had a meeting with the community on May 16.
“We told them that only when 51% of the people who were fined have paid the R500 deposit will we then install transformers in the community.”
Letsatsi said the communities are facing these challenges because of the damage to the transformers that have already been placed in the community and that most residents are not paying for their electricity.
“We cannot be punished for other people’s illegal activities. The department should send teams out to do regular check-ups and should make sure that their infrastructure isn’t tampered with and remove illegal connections,” stressed Makgotla.
Makgotla added that the community has now formed an executive committee to keep watch over the infrastructure.
“Without electricity, children can’t study, our grandparents have no place to store their medications, and businesses suffer,” said Makgotla.
