A City Power truck tipped and took out a complex wall while offloading a new mini substation after the original station exploded following alleged cable theft on 10 January.
According to resident Gareth Farinha, who lives inside the complex named Caprivi on the corner of Erasmus and Opera roads, the incident happened to one of their complex’s exterior walls late Sunday afternoon.
“First, on 10 January the power went off because of cable theft at the substation on the corner of Erasmus and Opera roads. City Power brought in a generator which ran out of diesel the next day.” He added that the entity sent out a truck to come and replace the substation on 11 January and that’s when it tipped and wiped out the exterior wall.
City Power spokesperson Sol Masolo confirmed the incident and said it was a mistake from City Power’s side. “Following the cable theft incident we noticed that the individuals were trying to take two transformers from the substation before the power went off. While trying to steal the transformers, the thieves damaged them and this caused the big outage that affected that part of Radiokop.”
He added that the entity brought two new mini substations to replace the damaged ones. “While we were offloading the substations one of them fell and broke the boundary wall causing it to collapse.”
Masolo explained that after the incident, the entity spoke to both the contractor and the owners of the wall and all parties agreed to have the wall replaced.
“The contractors agreed and committed to re-build the wall, all of the parties agreed to the terms,” concluded Masolo.
