Home owner left powerless and helpless

An Ilfracombe home owner has reached her wits’ end after endless electricity matters faced in her residential area (near Umgababa).

“My household, along with four other families who are my neighbors, has had no electricity since July 11 at 18:50, after a transformer blew up,” she said.

“We have logged numerous references for assistance with Eskom, only to be told by their technicians that they are unable to assist us until the occupants of the illegal electric connections pay their bills.”

The woman stated that there are people from her area who do connect to Eskom electricity poles illegally, but it confuses her as to why paying households are being punished for other people’s wrong doings.

“In addition to that matter, I have a parent who is a Type 1 diabetic and her chronic medication (injections) has now expired due to no cold storage, not to even mention the amount of food we had to discard due to no electricity.”

The resident said that this is not their first encounter with Eskom and their lack of service as, in May this year, their household was the only one in the entire neighbourhood with no electricity for five days, only to be told by the Eskom technicians that they are unable to assist as the pole was ‘too moldy’ and that they ‘fear for their lives’.
This issue was never resolved.

The woman has laid complaints about the lack of service received from Park Rynie Eskom offices, too.
Eskom’s Media Desk was contacted for feedback on the above matters.
Eskom said it was aware of an isolated transformer PUGS44, which feeds Umgababa customers, that has failed.

“The transformer failed due to an overload caused by a high number of bypassed meters and illegal electricity connections.”
Eskom explained that there are 150 known customers that are connected by Eskom legally to the transformer (PUGS44). Only 50 (33,3%) of these customers are paying for electricity that they are using whilst a total of 100 (66,7%) customers are not paying for the electricity they are using.
The utility is experiencing a significant increase in transformer failures in residential areas due to meter tampering, illegal connections, and vandalism of Eskom’s infrastructure.

This has caused a significant increase in the risk of transformer failures due to an overload.
The existing infrastructure has been installed to cater for supply requirements of Eskom’s customers.
“Due to the increasing number of the transformer failures, replacement thereof without addressing the root cause has become unsustainable, costly, and unsafe for Eskom’s technicians and members of the public, especially the innocent children,” said Eskom.

Eskom added that before the transformer can be replaced and supply restored, an audit must be conducted and the network normalised.

“The community members who are found to have tampered with the metering installation are issued with remedial fines and illegal connections removed and/ or normalised.”

“The responsible Eskom technical department is currently experiencing a high number of blown transformers which is causing delays in reaching some communities, however this transformer is on the priority.”

Eskom requests that at least 75% of customers connected to a transformer should be buying before a transformer is replaced.

HAVE YOUR SAY

Like the South Coast Herald’s Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram