Four day blackout due to cable fault

Residents in Randpark Ridge ext 57 and in Sundowner have spent four days in darkness.

The electricity went off at 11pm on 5 December and was still out on 9 December.

City power had informed residents that called in, that a multiple cable fault was to blame for the blackout, but did not inform them of the severity of the fault and as to when it would be resolved. Ward 98 councillor Laurette Van Zijl said that it had been a combined effort from DA councillors, who came together to try and get some answers.

Ward 102 councillor, David Potter has been hands on, trying to get City Power to fix the problem. “The Managing Director of City Power knew of this issue at around 1pm on 6 December from his staff, however a test unit only arrived on 7 December around 4pm and seemingly nothing further was done to attend to the problem, it is simply inexcusable for power outages to last this long, City Power should seriously up their reaction time to attend and restore electricity as soon as possible. Had it not been for my escalation and making a noise, City Power would probably have continued to ignore the cries of the residents,” said Potter.

He further added that the service delivery from the Randburg City Power Depot has purely been dismal and residents are now just tired of the lack of urgency that the depot team have.

The spokesperson for City Power Sol Masolo commented that he was aware that there was a problem and that he has a whole team attending to the fault. They should be done by the end of the working day on 8 December,” explained Masolo.

However, power was not restored by the end of the day on 8 December. Sundowner resident Wayne Theunissen said that around 7pm on 8 December City Power delivered a generator which provided power until 10am the next day.

In the meantime City Power managed to repair the fault and full power was restored on 9 December.

Details: City Power 011 375 5555, www.citypower.co.za