A resident of Witpoortjie spent almost 48 hours without power after a steel power pole fell onto his property, damaging his palisade gate on Tuesday, 25 June.
The resident, Louis Toerien, said the pole fell after a Vumatel employee used it to install fibre network cabling.
However, he blamed the lack of maintenance of infrastructure as the cause of the problem.
“You could clearly see that the steel pole was rotten from the bottom. It goes to show how many other poles will be falling onto people’s properties or the streets,” Louis said.
Although the power pole was repaired after the intervention of the Roodepoort Record and the Ward 71 councillor, Rene Benjamin, the resident was dissatisfied about the entity’s delay in responding to the matter.
“While we waited for City Power to come and sort out the problem, we were in darkness. The incident posed a great danger to us because our alarm system wasn’t working and people could easily jump into the property using the pole which was resting on the palisade,” he explained.
He added that they also feared for theft of the cable from the vulnerable pole, as the scourge remains rife in the area.
City Power has been approached for comment on the incident.
