Mayor demands answers

KwaDukuza mayor Ricardo Mthembu wants to know why Ballito residents and businesses were not kept informed during power outages last week.
Electricity in Ballito was out for most of Friday, February 28 after Telkom hit and damaged the area’s main 33 000 volt cable.
There was darkness again on Monday while engineers repaired a second fault which went unnoticed the during the first round of repairs.
During a council meeting on Wednesday last week Mthembu said he was at Ballito Lifestyle Centre when the electricity went off.
“What I saw was that business people were unaware of what was going on and they had to operate under difficult circumstances, through no fault of their own. We have to communicate with our people in situations like this.”
Executive committee member cllr Ann McDonnell suggested a bulk SMS system be implemented, as was proved effective by Sembcorp Siza Water during the recent water restrictions.
The municipality sent out a public apology to Ballito residents on Tuesday, explaining the outages in detail.
According to the statement the cable was temporarily repaired at 5pm but failed after it was energised.
“The electrical team decided to perform 33kV network configuration and managed to energise another 33kV – 95 mm² cable to supply electricity to the affected customers. Due to the high electricity demand and the cold load situation, KwaDukuza Municipality Electrical Department had to perform load shedding to prevent nuisance tripping until such time that the network had been stabilized and electricity could be restored to all affected customers.”
The southern network failed again on Monday, leading to more load shedding.
“KwaDukuza Municipality is committed to service delivery and will continue to strive for a high level of service excellence.”