Residents in some parts of Pimville have experienced continuous power outages that went as far as up to 5 days, and unfortunately, some have reported spoiled food in their refrigerators that they had to throw away, damaged electrical appliances and most residents said that they were never made aware of these outages.
Eskom says that it is pulling all the stops to keep the lights on during these cold weathers and to maintain a minimal disruption in the provision of electricity, however, the power utility alleges that continuous power outages experienced by residents in some parts of Pimville are often due to cable theft and therefore they are unplanned and unpredictable. Other causes may include, network overloading, illegal connections or technical faults.
“We make sure that we communicate with our customers whenever there will be planned outages, through SMS, social media, media releases, customer newsletters etc. customers who do not get notifications through SMS need to update their contact details with Eskom. Unfortunately, unplanned outages are unpredictable and in Pimville, they are often due to cable theft,” said Tumi Moloi of Media Relations at Eskom.
According to the media statement issued by Eskom, Pimville specifically has the following challenges, overloading minisubs, customers not reporting when they have power outages, but just go straight to the streets, cable theft and meter tampering.
The utility is resolving these problems by, installing additional minisubs, splitting Low Voltage (LV) cables, installing split meters, creating customer awareness and having daily patrolling of known cable hotspots to prevent theft and cable damage.
The utility also has a winter plan, called the Eskom Distribution Customer-Centric Winter Plan which is designed to ensure that minimal disruptions occur and the safety of the public, Eskom staff and the environment is prioritised.
Part of the plan is to implement measures that will assist in preventing possible equipment failures and incidents, manage network delivery failures for the national and provincial networks in winter, implement emergency preparedness plans to manage power system interruptions that might materialize and to increase the capacity of customer contact centre.
Outages for non-paying and non-buying customers will not be restored immediately, they will be audited within 72 hours and illegal connections will be removed, with regular operations in collaboration with the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD).
Report illegal connections on 08600 37566 or via SMS to Crime Line or to your local police station or Eskom office.
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