Residents not satisfied with City Power’s permanent fix
Isaac Mangena said that high load-shedding stages impose further challenges to their network as the infrastructure is not designed to be turned on and off.
City Power was still unable to permanently repair the streetlights on Neilson Drive in Blairgowrie that had been an issue for more than nine months.
Harold Fleishman, co-chair of Blairgowrie Community Association, stated that the work they had done and was still incomplete.
This follows after a temporary fix in December 2022 that resulted in dangling street light poles, low-hanging live power lines, and other cables tied to trees. The temporary repair took place in the aftermath of an accident that occurred. A car had knocked down two electrical poles and these were temporarily erected. A temporary fix was conducted with a promise to do a permanent repair shortly after.
Isaac Mangena, City Power spokesperson, confirmed that on September 9, a team was dispatched to quantify the material required to work on a permanent fix. On September 10, a team worked on repairs and cleared the site.
“We acknowledges the delay in fixing the streetlights. We understand the residents’ frustration and concerns about the dangerous situation and the security risk these delays are causing the Blairgowrie community.”
However, Fleishman explained that residents are not satisfied with the entity’s work.
“The lights have been repaired but the poles that had snapped off at the base were not replaced. They are held up with rocks placed at the base. ABC cables are still hanging, the pole top box that was smashed has not been replaced. Cables are tied to the tree to keep them off the ground and poles are still leaning over.”
He added that they are unhappy and the repairs are substandard. “Poles need to be replaced and not old broken poles reused – ABC cables need to be tensioned correctly and not tied to trees to keep them off the ground, broken pole top boxes also need to be replaced.”
Mangena apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused. He added that over the winter season, City Power team was inundated with high numbers of unplanned outages and emergency work required to normalise the network and keep the lights on.
“The Randburg SDC has also experienced a high number of cases of theft and vandalism, which has put a lot of pressure on material availability.”
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