National shutdown: City Power work compromised by EFF protest

The Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF) national shutdown has compromised City Power’s service delivery, leaving the utility  with over 800 power outage calls by the end of the protest.

This is according to the regional electricity provider who warned customers of restoration delays due to protesters barricading certain areas where faults were reported.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the utility opened with 736 calls and closed the day with 806 calls.

Mangena said City Power received hundreds of outage calls from customers, but could not respond due to road closures and security risks during the shutdown.

“We continue to strive to drive down the number of calls through timeous and effective communication. While we encourage the logging of calls we also call upon communities to find ways to work with us to pro-actively protect infrastructure.”

Cable theft

Mangena said there was also an incident of attempted cable theft.

“Most worrying was an incident in the early hours of Monday morning, of attempted cable theft at our Lunar Substation in Lenasia where our security guards were assaulted and robbed of personal belongings and a trench was dug exposing cables, although no cables were stolen.

“We had to halt work due to intimidation at our Mechanical Workshop (Dobsonville) site. Work also slowed down significantly in a number of sites, because of blockages and hindrances in various areas leading to diversions and delays,” Mangena said.

ALSO READ: Most of Bloemfontein in the dark after substation explosion

Load shedding suspended

Meanwhile, Eskom has suspended load shedding until Tuesday.

The crumbling state-owned entity made the announcement on Monday.

Eskom Crisis Communication Manager Menzi Mngomezulu said there has been a lower than expected demand for electricity.

“Due to the significantly lower than anticipated demand for electricity today, load shedding will be suspended at 11am today (Monday) until 4pm on Tuesday, 21 March, when stage 2 load shedding will be implemented.”

The suspension of the deliberate power cuts will be welcomed by South Africans ahead of Human Rights Day on Tuesday.

Over the past week, the parastatal has announced a number of improvements to the electricity grid, which has lowered load shedding from the crippling high stages of earlier this month.

ALSO READ: National shutdown: Eskom suspends load shedding for entire day