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WATCH: Left without electricity for days, Boksburg residents take back their power
'It’s just strange that it took residents only two days to do what the municipality wanted to wait for more than a week before working on the issue.'
Picture: Boksburg Advertiser
After being left in the dark for days, residents of Bardene and Beyers Park decided to take the lead on a project to restore power in their neighbourhoods.
On Saturday morning, residents reportedly held a meeting to demand that their electricity supply be restored. This is where a decision was taken to fix the problem themselves, instead of waiting for municipal workers.
According to Ward 22 councillor Ruhan Robinson, residents of the two suburbs had been experiencing perpetual power outages for weeks due to faulty power cables.
This came after two of the three feeder cables buried in the waterlogged ground under the Elizabeth Road bridge, running over the N12, was damaged.
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As a result, the metro reportedly opted to implement load rotation and cut-offs to prevent overloading the single feeder cable left to supply the affected areas.
Robinson said the Energy Department wanted to wait for more than a week for the water to dry up before fixing the damaged cables.
However, residents could not take it anymore and started to drain the water themselves, and it took them only Saturday and Sunday to get it done.
Municipal workers arrived and managed to fix one of the damaged cables before power was restored on Sunday.
“It’s just strange that it took residents only two days to do what the municipality wanted to wait for more than a week before working on the issue.
“At last people have power but these are only temporary measures. A long-term solution would entail rerouting the power line. It is for that reason that we are petitioning the municipality to make funds available for the project to reroute the feeder cables,” explained Robinson.
The metro has not yet responded to our questions with regards to the power problems.
This article was republished from Boksburg Advertiser with permission
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