Editor
I would like to reply, through the medium of your newspaper, to what appears to be a standard response from the Municipal Manager, with regard to the power outage in Colita on the weekend of March 14 – 16.
I acknowledge that a formal enquiry was not made but this was difficult to do outside of the working hours of Umtshezi Municipality.
However, I did contact the Emergency Call Centre to query the extent of the problem.
The repeated stock response to myself and other community members, who also had taken this initiative, was: “I don’ t know, they busy with it”.
Receiving no joy from the “official” line of communication, I personally took it upon myself to investigate further. I went to make enquiries from the electricians engaged with the repairs at the green electrical box in Cosmos Street. I was told they were working around the clock to find a speedy solution.
We now know that this was not forthcoming.
The assumption that community members had means and time to protect their food over the weekend is arguable. As a service provider, what initiative or backup plan did the municipality have in place to secure the goods and services of the consumer who makes payments every month?
To my knowledge, the traffic department only communicated to the community on Sunday morning around 11am and distributed candles later that afternoon, an hour or so before the electricity was connected.
As a long time resident of Estcourt, having being born, educated, married and raising my children in this town, I have witnessed the slow decline in service delivery. There are no longer sources of pride and beacons of beauty, which we can lay claim to.
Estcourt once hailed the ‘Queen of the Midlands’ is a disgusting eyesore. I would like to appeal to the community to make their voices heard on March 26, 2014.
Mrs N Singh
Emergency Control was inundated with calls about the power outage in Colita, as they often are when there is a power failure, they contact the persons in charge from the Electricity Department who will try to give some idea as to what is wrong.
With the fault in Colita, the faulty circuit was located and the portion of cable that had faulted needed to be repaired, but in order to repair a faulty cable, the exact location needed to be established. Since the writer would like to enquire about what she has been told, I will give you a brief explanation, the cable is 412 meters long, it is XLPE cable (Cross Linked Polyethylene Cable), this cable is damaged by lightning and since Umtshezi had a numerous of these storms within the past few weeks, it can be concluded that the cable suffered some damage at that time. But since the fault was not evident enough prior to it failing over that two days, it only can be presumed that the rain had finally soaked it just enough to track across causing it to carbonise enough to trip.
The fault was difficult to locate with the test vehicle since it was holding at 2 000 Volts, hence the reason for the staff being “busy working on it” was given.
This simply means that the staff were in fact busy working on locating the actual fault.
The cable could not be switched on as that circuit is a 6 600 Volt circuit. The cable was eventually cut and the faulty portion was abandoned, this lead the municipality to engage contractors to build a “High Voltage Line” to speed up the process. The backup plan of the municipality is to restore electricity as soon as possible. If the writer would note, it is not often that outages last so long in Estcourt, actually its been years since there was such a long outage, and considering that the staff work tirelessly throughout the night and weekends to ensure the power is back on, is proof enough of our commitment to the customers of Umtshezi Municipality.
The Traffic Department had communicated to the community on Saturday and Sunday.
The plan is to build a new line, which will only be used in the event of a fault (yes, faults can also occur on new equipment), however the 412 meter cable will need to be abandoned and a new cable will be installed
Residents need to also note that on Thursday, March 27, the electricity will be switched of so as to connect the newly built line, the cable will be replaced with a new cable once the cable arrives in Estcourt, since it needs to be purchased. A second line will also be built from Cosmos Road, along Jennings Road to the minisubstation in Qonti, this work needs to be done by contractors as it is specialised work
Kindly note that we are doing our best to ensure that the electricity stays on but should there be a fault, we will continue to work so that power is restored as quick as possible.
Ms PN Njoko
Municipal Manager
