Residents of Wilgeheuwel and surrounding areas have been victims of power outages over a period of a week, with the possibility of more outages.
According to City Power, the incidents began on 23 January when a feeder cable on Florin Road tripped at around 4.50pm due to cable fault. This affected power supply to Little Falls but technicians restored power to residents by 9.43pm.
Two days later, on 25 January, a feeder cable in Wilgeheuwel was damaged by a third party and caused an outage which affected the entire area from 7.13am to 3.05pm.
In Ruimsig a similar incident occurred when feeder cables were stolen and there was no power from 4.06am until 1.43pm.
City Power was able to repair and restore power in all the aforementioned areas on the same day.
Ward councillor Leah Knott was active during this time, updating residents on the situation and reasons for the outages. Notices have also been circulated on City Power’s Twitter account @CityPowerJhb.
Update: Power outage affecting honeydew and surrounding due to tripped distributor at the Ruimsig 11/88kv Substation. ^JR
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) January 27, 2017
City Power claims the outages are due to escalating incidents of cable theft and vandalism of infrastructure in these areas and they encourage residents to report suspicious or fraudulent behaviour, as these offences compromise the stability of the network and affect service delivery.
“We have launched a campaign to fight the scourge of cable theft using response vehicles which patrol high-risk areas [determined by] theft and vandalism statistics. However, there are limitations to using patrol vehicles because they are unable to cover large areas, making it difficult to prevent every cable theft incident. We have, however, conducted joint operations with the police, Metro police and scrap metal dealers because we know this is where criminals sell stolen cables,” said Yumna Sheik, spokesperson for City Power.
“Over and above these interventions we are installing aerial bundle conductors (ABC) across the City of Johannesburg to discourage cables thieves. The ABC is made of aluminium, which is of no value to cable thieves. We have also started replacing lattice pylons with monopoles,” explained Sheik.
As of the morning of 27 January, Knott reported on a community WhatAspp group that power had been restored to Honeydew and Ruimsig, thanks to City Power technicians working in the rain. In a separate post, Knott claimed the outages were because of cable theft and the perpetrators were apprehended.
Details: To report any cable theft and related incidents call 011 490 7900/7911/7504/7553; toll-free 080 000 2587.
