Power problems reach point of overload in Ferndale
Ferndale residents vent their frustration with days without power.
To say residents of Ferndale, Bryanston, Kensington B and surrounds are frustrated with their electricity situation would be a severe understatement.
Regular tripping following load-shedding, a seemingly shoddy installation of a new mini-substation, extensive delays in response times, and an apparent lack-lustre attitude from City Power staff form the crux of complaints.
“Every week there is a major outage, just in a different street,” lamented Ferndale Residents Association co-chairperson Erica de Jager. “With the one outage, there were five days without power in the street and I went to City Power’s offices seven times to sort it out. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Also read: Residents of West Avenue in Ferndale go to City Power offices to resolve problems
She said one outage lasted a whole 114 hours (almost five days).
Michiel Bouwer of Bouwer and Olivier Inc Attorneys finds it incredibly frustrating. “We’ve had to run the generator non-stop just to continue with basic operations,” he said.
“It’s hard enough to cope with load-shedding, but when you don’t have any power in-between to charge backup batteries, it makes it nearly impossible to run a business.”
He said other companies in the complex have been even worse affected. One, in particular, had to spend half its revenue generated in the past two weeks just to purchase fuel for its generator.
Ward 104 Emi Koekemoer said there were numerous power outages that lasted between four and six days, for three weeks.
“Those included the Harley Street substation seeing two transformers go down, another min-sub had to be replaced and another one had a vandalised box. Once, the whole block was out for a day,” she said.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the municipal entity was dealing with a crisis of eight running outages across the Randburg area.
“Load-shedding, rain, and much-needed operators meeting at head office have slowed down our restoration process,” he said.
“I have been working on communications to calm down residents while we work around the delays to run faults, test cables, and restore power.”
He said he would respond to questions Randburg Sun sent about these outages as soon as he could.
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