No electricity or answers: Ekurhuleni residents left in the dark as substations and cables burn out

Thousands of Ekurhuleni residents have had no electricity or intermittent supply over the past six days after a string of substations burnt out, cables melted down and repair work undid itself within hours of fixing.

Dark week for Ekurhuleni residents

Many parts of Boksburg were affected along with sections of Kempton Park. In community groups residents have aired their frustration as food rotted in fridges, appliances broke down and calls to the city’s call centre yielded no information. Electricity was restored in some parts on Sunday, only for a few hours, and again on Wednesday, also for a few hours. In both instances more cables and substations gave up the ghost.

Local ward councillor Simon Lapping, also the DA’s spokesperson on energy in council, is furious.

“There are simply no answers, nobody in the municipality seems to give a damn. It’s ‘spoeg en plak’ repairs that fix the symptom, not the cause,” Lapping said.

“When officials have no idea whether there are spare parts, or even when engineers would be dispatched to affected areas, it just evidences the absolute decay that has occurred over the past 30 years,” he said. “If this is a glimpse into the future of the city, it doesn’t work. It’s bleak.”

Replacement cables of substandard quality?

Last week, Lapping said, Kempton Park experienced a blackout due to a cable fault but, he alleged, the replacement cable was thinner and of substandard quality, so it disintegrated shortly after installation. The suburb was plunged back into darkness after a few hours.

The city’s Zweli Dlamini denied this.

“All cable connections are executed in accordance with standard operating procedures and industry standards. It must be noted that infrastructure theft and vandalism, including attempted theft and vandalism, have an impact on the entire power system,” he said.

Dlamini said that one of the five substations that fell over in Boksburg this week caught fire due to extensively high fault currents because of stolen earthing conductors.

“The city replaced stolen earthing in the substation, the energy department is working closely with the ICT department, EMPD and the appointed security service providers to safeguard the primary substations forming the backbone of the distribution networks.”

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Ekurhuleni’s infrastructure cannot handle load shedding

A former Eskom employee told The Citizen that Ekurhuleni’s infrastructure cannot manage mass load shedding events.

“Outages were far more manageable when Ekurhuleni was switching off smaller areas per the schedule and managing the process manually,” he said.

The crippled national utility assumed control of Ekurhuleni’s load shedding schedule in February, and, he said, that was when the problems started manifesting.

The Head of Department for Electricity in Ekurhuleni, Tshilidzi Thenga, also blamed load shedding for the recent spate of sustained outages – except load shedding was suspended three days ago. He didn’t have an answer to that and told The Citizen that challenges must be interrogated from root cause.

Lapping found this laughable. “That’s the best one I heard all year. Even residents know what the problems are. It’s a crumbling infrastructure that was poorly maintained for three decades,” he said.

Thenga also said that there are “outages every minute” in Ekurhuleni and could not be drawn on a plan of action to solve the spreading electricity problems that the metro faces.

“People are gatvol. Infrastructure is disintegrating at a seemingly accelerated pace, vandalism and theft is out of control, and as councillors our hands are sometimes tied as to what we can do and the level of intervention we are legally entitled to,” said Lapping.

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He said that during the past week and a half he received more than a hundred thousand WhatsApps and uncountable calls. “People are looking for information, a little bit of hope. The call centre just issues reference numbers,” he said sarcastically.

“I will be asking questions in council,” said Lapping, “but I doubt whether any answers of substance will be forthcoming.”

Lapping and community activist Hilary Coke met The Citizen at some of the sites affected, along with other members of the community.

“I am no engineer but cables exploding underground, substation repairs only lasting a few hours, it’s all just a stuff up. The head of department has a lot to answer for,” said Lapping.

Thenga declined joining the visits to the affected sites, saying he had to attend a council meeting.