A never-ending Houtkoppen nightmare
Community members who receive their power from the Houtkoppen Substation have had an increasing number of power outages.
North Riding and surrounding areas have been tormented by service problems as the lack of maintenance of the Houtkoppen Substation continues to expose a disproportional number of faults emanating from the substation.
Members of the community gathered at the Houtkoppen Substation on May 30 to voice their frustration regarding this matter. They shared how they had asked for help through various social media platforms and created hashtags that correlated to their exact problem. As many began to lose hope, others were determined to put an end to this problem for good.
The residents of these areas have faced major problems, such as long power outages, and recently saw an increased number of extended power cuts. According to a statement from Douglasdale Community Policing Forum (CPF) chairperson Lizzy Mabena, the substation tripped every time it was turned back on after load-shedding. Residents also faced completely unrelated cuts that left them in the dark for almost 17 hours.
One of the residents believes they would continue to have this problem with ‘3 500 shacks’ behind them paying for power sourced from the Houtkoppen Substation.
According to ward councillor candidate CDE Tshepo Marakalala, a budget to reduce the prolonged overload of the substation from the Kya Sand settlement had been set in place and approved two years ago. This budget was set aside to isolate Kya Sands’ electricity feed from the Houtkoppen Substation and to minimise ‘the issue of illegal connection’.
On June 2, a meeting was set to inform the community about the matter at hand by various entities. MMC of Environment and Infrastructure Service Michael Sun acknowledged the inconvenience that the North Riding residents had gone through as he knows the seriousness of the issues in the area.
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