BETHAL – Bethal residents vented their anger and frustration on social media towards Govan Mbeki Municipality after the town had been experiencing load shedding, as well as power outages for up to 24 hours.
In some areas the electricity was, after several days, still off at time of going to press.
Besides load shedding, there was also a cable fault which affected Eland, Du Plooy and Duiker Street, leaving residents without electricity for more than two days.
GMM electrical team were to attend to a snapped cable and a cable fault.
GMM issued a notice in February stating that, at the time, Eskom was implementing the national load shedding. GMM informed customers partial rotational load shedding would be implemented for Bethal, eMzinoni, Kinross and Evander due to these towns exceeding the agreed electricity supply between GMM and Eskom.
Also read: Bethal residents are tired of power outages
According to Eskom, there is currently no load shedding, but GMM is implementing their load shedding as part of the exceeding contracted notified maximum demand in the areas which contravenes the electricity supply agreement.
Ms Mariaan Chamberlain, DA councillor, sent a message out on media groups explaining to residents of Bethal that a protection setting of the Eskom transformers has been set to the maximum demand of the municipality.
The transformer of Eskom will trip if the municipality exceeds the demand for which they had applied and paid.
“Bethal and eMzinoni are exceeding the maximum demand by about 10mw and therefore it results in load shedding. GMM have tried to increase the demand with Eskom, but Eskom refuses due to the outstanding bill,” said Ms Chamberlain.
Eskom responded by saying: “With the Covid-19 national lockdown in full effect, Eskom has experienced a significant reduction in demand for electricity. Eskom is making use of the opportunity of the low demand to carry out important short-term maintenance of our generation infrastructure.”
“Planned and unplanned maintenance already commenced and will be completed with limited resources and at only absolute critical sites. This applies to Eskom’s electricity infrastructure nationally,” said Eskom.
Also read: Some municipal services will still be available in the Govan Mbeki municipal area during lockdown
At the time of going to press Mr Benzi Soko, chief of staff and acting head of communications informed Ridge Times that the Executive Mayor Ms Thandi Ngxonono was with the GMM electrical team attending to the electricity situation in Bethal and eMzinoni (9th Street).
“GMM officials are hard at work attending to the electricity challenges,” said Mr Soko.
Mr Soko also sent out the following notification:
“The Govan Mbeki Municipality is attending to the electricity situation in Bethal.
“The NMD issue was thoroughly discussed with Eskom and we are awaiting their intervention as per the resolutions.
“The first amount that Eskom demanded to kickstart the process was paid and we are expecting them to proceed.
“The GMM executive mayor with MMCs and the entire senior management have descended on Bethal to address the situation and to ensure that all processes are expeditiously executed to fix this problem once and for all.”
eMbalenhle residents have also taken to social media to raise their frustrations with continued power outages they have been facing.
Also read: Covid-19: Victims of domestic violence help lines
