Pimville’s Eskom nightmare continues
Sun Valley residents in Pimville Zone 7 are living through a modern-day nightmare. the township is approaching a full year without electricity.
Amid a global pandemic that has already claimed the lives of more than 50 000 people across South Africa, and over 3 million worldwide, Sun Valley residents in Pimville Zone 7 are living through a modern-day nightmare. Sun Valley is approaching a full year without electricity.
They last had electricity in October last year. Helen Gaba, an elderly resident of Sun Valley accused Eskom of intentionally ignoring the township.
“Just here in Soweto, Moroka there was a similar problem at the Moroka sub-station, but in 5 days Eskom had fixed the problem. It has been 9 months for us. You cannot tell me that is not intentional. This place has become a crime hotspot. We do not feel safe at all. Are we not deserving of electricity? Or should we die first or a child kidnapped? We are pleading with Eskom to help us,” she said.
The situation in Sun Valley is so dire that residents have resorted to burning their old furniture and using it as firewood. Several residents have also claimed to be experiencing breathing difficulties due to the extended use of gas stoves. Learners who attend a school in the area also struggling.
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In late February this year, an elderly woman living in the area suffered second-degree burns to her face while using a primus stove. Outraged, residents turned their frustration to their local Councillor, Lizzy Mabasa, who they accuse of failing to report the outage to Eskom. However, Mabasa revealed to Soweto Urban a series of WhatsApp messages between herself and Eskom officials, requesting assistance from the power utility. These requests date as far back as November last year.
“People do not understand that there are processes involved. From my position as councillor, the best I can do is escalate the matter to Eskom and I have done that. As you can see, I have been asking Eskom to assist us for a long time. Yet still, residents come to my home to attack me and threaten my family,” she said.
Earlier this month residents called for Mabasa to step down and commenced with protest action, blocking both Modjaji Street and Chris Hani Rd. Responding to the allegations of neglect, Eskom acknowledged that they were aware of the situation in Sun Valley, but blamed the delay in addressing it on the residents’ hostility towards Eskom technicians. “The delay came as a result of the community’s violent actions against Eskom technicians who had gone to the area to work on supply restoration.
Members of the community made violent threats and chased our employees out of the area. Eskom has a list of failed infrastructure to repair or replace and this area was on that list. When we could not work in the area due to safety reasons, the resources meant for the area were diverted to the next area on the list.” Eskom also accused residents of bridging Eskom’s infrastructure and causing further damage.
“They (Sun Valley residents) illegally managed to restore supply until they experienced the same problem months after the initial outage. Eskom has in the recent past months recorded a high number of failed electricity infrastructure due to network overload resulting from illegal connections, meter bypasses and tampering, unauthorised operations, vandalism, and theft of electrical equipment. All these lead to the electricity infrastructure (minisubs and transformers) failures and explosions.”
Eskom added that while Sun Valley had been recently returned to their priority list, they could not provide an estimation on when electricity would be returned.
“The area is back on the priority list but at this stage, we are not able to indicate as to when we will be able to work in the area. We are awaiting material, as soon as we receive it we will plan accordingly,” the power utility told Soweto Urban. Residents, however, rebuffed Eskom’s claims. “We last saw Eskom technicians here in November, they said they would return with a new box and they never did. Why would we attack technicians who have come to help us? It is a lie,” one resident lashed out.
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