While the rest of South Africa has been plummeted back into scheduled load-shedding, residents of Dwarkskloof said they don’t know if their load-shedding had been extended or if Eskom had forgotten about them.
They’ve been left in darkness since Wednesday November 17 at 16:00. Their electricity was expected to be back on at 18:30, but it’s still lights out for them.
One of the residents in the area, Simon Barkhuizen, 71, who is also a small-scale farmer who relies on borehole water, said he needs to pump water for his animals to survive.
Barkhuizen said he tried for more than three hours to report the issue on the national telephone number (086 003 7566), only to be sent from pillar to post, which left him even more frustrated.
When you phone they just tell you to go on the My Customer app, but the app is also faulty; it is only giving us a technical error message,” he said.
He and other residents don’t know whether electricity in their area is still off due to cable theft, a technical fault or whether Eskom has simply forgotten to reconnect them
“We don’t know what’s going on. We don’ know if Eskom knows we have this problem, and we can’t reach them,” Barkhuizen said.
The Herald has made numerous attempts to reach Eskom for comment, without any luck.
