After receiving a call from an angry resident of the Wheatlands plots regarding a power outage, the herald went to investigate.
According to Annetjie Botha their electricity went out around 1am last Friday and power only was restored roughly 10 hours later.
After the power had gone off, Botha called the municipality to have it restored so that her morning routine would not be upset but saw municipal workers on the scene for the first time only at around 9am. Naturally, she was enraged by their late response.
The herald spoke to Erens de Witt, one of the municipal workers at the scene to restore electricity to the area. He said on Friday the electricity pole collapsed after cable thieves had sawn it off. “They stole about three metres of cables.”
When asked if stealing cables was not extremely dangerous, De Witt replied that cable thieves know exactly what to do to prevent being injured or electrocuted.
When De Witt was confronted about the municipality’s delayed response to the complaint he responded, “People do not understand our situation – we cannot just go and fix a problem. Someone first needs to go and inspect the problem to see what kind of issue it is. After that we need to get approval from the relevant authorities and only then we can go out and fix the problem.”
