Nothing done about Sundowner’s mini-substations since November, despite “first preference”
City Power has showed no attempts at securing mini-substations in Sundowner – Ward councillor says.
More than two months after City Power said it would investigate why numerous locks on mini-substations in Sundowner had been broken – and promised to give the area ‘first preference’ to replace them once locks were sourced – nothing had been done.
Resident David Strachan and Ward 134 councillor Devon Steenkamp have expressed their frustration at raising the issue time and again for promises to be made with no time frames given at best, or what Strachan claimed were outright lies, at worst.
Also read: Sundowner substations are all open and easy pickings for theft
In November, Strachan took Randburg Sun on a walk through the suburb where all eight mini-substations visited were open.
Live cables were visible from the outside as most doors were left ajar or broken off their hinges. Some had locks on them but these were all useless as the mini-substations were all accessible.
One door had a wire holding it closed while another with an open door hummed with live electricity right outside a nursery school.
Strachan has been complaining to City Power about this for years and has the reference numbers to prove it.
More than two months after City Power made those promises, Randburg Sun brought the matter to spokesperson Isaac Mangena’s attention again.
He responded, “While it is difficult to follow up on the specifics of the [Sundowner] case given time constraints, City Power is currently in the process of quantifying the number of locks required in its feeder zone. This project is much bigger than the case in [Sundowner] as the prevalence of vandalism has been one of our biggest problems. For this reason, the date of delivery might have been slightly delayed.”
He added that as per safety policies City Power ‘does ensure that every enclosed chamber is closed and locked’.
Keys to the mini-substations were issued in accordance with a standard operating procedure to authorised personnel, he said.
“Therefore, [there is] no reason for them [authorised personnel] to break the locks,” Mangena added, saying the high number of open mini-substations was the result of theft and vandalism.
In response, Strachan said this was not true as he claimed to have spoken with City Power contractors who had broken into some mini-substations to gain access to them while attending to faults.
Steenkamp said there have been many allegations of contractors deliberately doing shoddy work.
“[That is] why the former MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services Department Michael Sun announced a change of moving towards more City Power electricians who can be held more accountable and focus on area-based deployments where they will gain knowledge of the infrastructure,” the ward councillor said.
“We have been told numerous times that City Power will attend to it, but are yet to see results. City Power needs to start giving us timelines on when these matters of securing mini-substations, pillar boxes and overall their infrastructure [will occur].”
He said North Riding agricultural holdings was the hardest hit by vandalism while Sundowner and other suburbs have had similar concerns.
City Power can’t rely [on] every local mini-substation to be secured by the community while they have shown no attempts on their side yet.”
