Dobsonville residents frustrated with electricity crisis

Residents of Dobsonville say they are irritated and frustrated by the electricity crisis they are currently facing.

This comes after residents of Ward 47 and 48 embarked on a protest action closing the Dobsonville main road on August 21, demanding that their electricity be restored.

According to information provided by an affected resident, Mandla Nyaqela, their electricity supply is unstable and at times it goes off for two to three days in a week.

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He said when they ask why, they are often given odd names that defines the electricity crisis or be told that its cable theft.

“This situation has had a negative impact on us; we can’t buy food and store it in our refrigerators because it will be spoiled.

From time to time we take baths using cold water and our kids do the same when they go to school. It’s not pleasant to live in the dark.

“Also, gas is expensive and we don’t always have the money to buy it. Wood has now turned into treasure and we are living like we are in the rural areas,” said Nyaqela.

Nyaqela further stated that as a community they would appreciate it if Eskom can notify them before cutting off their electricity supply because their appliances are getting damaged.

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In response, Eskom Gauteng Spokesperson, Amanda Qithi said they experienced an outage resulting from a cable fault on August 21 affecting customers in Dobsonville.

She said the power utility managed to restore supply but unfortunately they experienced further faults which interrupted supply to the same customers in Dobsonville.

“We attend to outages as they occur and are reported to Eskom. We do all possible to restore supply as soon as we become aware of it within Eskom processes. However, at times we experience delays due to the nature of the faults and the work required to restore supply,” said Qithi.