Lack of stock delays City Power repairs as Joburg suburbs sit in dark for two weeks

Several areas across the City of Johannesburg have gone for over two weeks without electricity as City Power struggles to find parts needed to carry out repairs.

In a statement released on Sunday, City Power said the outages were due to a “lack of material and stock in our stores”, which had delayed repairs.

“City Power would like to appeal for patience from customers as we address the backlogs in the restoration of electricity to most outstanding areas,” added its spokesperson, Isaac Mangena.

Some of the material not in stock include spare pole-mounted transformers, mini-substations and fuses, among others.

“Overloading on the network has seen most of these blow up and burn, leading to an increase in their demand. We also had problems with finding the suppliers for these materials due to the Covid-19 challenges.”

New stock was received on Friday and work to complete the repairs would continue into the coming week, Mangena said.

He called for co-operation in ensuring the safety of repair teams.

“We also appeal with you to co-operate with our teams when they do their job in your area. We will not hesitate to pull out our teams if we believe they are not safe, which will prolong the outages,” Mangena said.

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