Residents will have to hang in there for at least another week when it comes to mystery outages in parts of Witpoortjie and Princess as City Power officials don’t care to come to the table.
Allegedly Roodepoort operations manager Noel Maso told businesses and residents reporting the problem “it’s just too bad” and said the issue will not be resolved for at least the next week. He still has not made himself available for comment to the Record.
“The operations manager of City Power in Roodepoort simply has a no-care attitude about businesses and residents who continue to experience outages,” one City Power official said about the media-evading man.
Since Saturday 5 September residents have experienced mystery outages, according to Ward 71 councillor Gert Niemand, because a Princess substation’s transformer exploded laying a too heavy burden on a second substation in Penny Street. Electricity theft and illegal connections seem to be to blame for the failure. Each time an illegal connection was made this week it caused the power to trip, the source said. However, an end is in sight with the broken substation to be removed and a new substation to be installed. According to Niemand who had been inundated with calls from residents, he had been running up and down throughout the week informing residents individually of the plans going forward, “as City Power have refused to answer the public’s plea or communicate the cause of the failure in the media”.
Niemand stated that the building on which premises the faulty substation was installed as well as surrounding properties were recently bought up by a business further down Albertina Sisulu (previously Main Reef) Road. The business has, according to him, offered their own premises to City Power to install the replacement substation, which will cost in the region of R500 000 to do. Yesterday during a site visit, according to Niemand, the proposal was turned down and City Power instead opted to locate the new substation further back on the same property.
Earlier today in a joint operation by Roodepoort Police, JMPD and City Power illegal connections were removed in order for the substation to be removed. City Power spokesperson Sol Masolo has to date ignored requests for comment.
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