ILLEGAL power connections are continuing to plague residents of Parkington Grove who have endured yet another week without electricity. Some residents have now been without electricity for more than eight days. Last week angry residents met with newly appointed ward councillor, Bobby Maharajh, to air out their grievances.
The illegal connections have also adversely affected those who have health problems and are reliant on electricity. More than 10 residents met with Maharajh and voiced their discontent with the city’s lack of action. What’s more, the neighbouring informal settlement, which the illegal connections lead to, have electricity.
The residents said the electricity thieves had become so blatant, they made no effort to hide their work. Some of the wires ran across the road; other wires were strung through trees and some were left hanging from the electricity poles.
Andiswa Gogela, who has a nine-year-old son who is diabetic said the power outages is affecting his insulin injections.
“We’ve had to buy ice to keep the insulin cold. I’ve had 15 reference numbers from the municipality who don’t seem to be doing anything to help the situation. We are incurring extra costs and when I e-mailed the municipality’s insurance division to list all the items we had lost, I was told to take pictures of the items to prove how the outages were affecting items. How do you prove that medication is being affected? It’s just ridiculous,” Gogela said.
Another resident, Annette Thungaveloo, who relies on an electrically operated apparatus because of a sleeping disorder has to now spend her nights at her in-laws in Kenville until the lights are turned on.
“It’s extremely annoying, the moment our lights are stolen, a huge floodlight comes on at the informal settlement. We pay for our electricity so it’s very frustrating. The lack of action from the city is even more frustrating. I’m often waiting on the line for more than an hour just to report the outage. What we have now asked for is for the city to give the informal settlement electricity like they have done in other settlements to prevent the theft of our electricity,” she said.
