Residents of RDP houses in Protea South recently convened yet another one of many meetings with Eskom officials in a bid to solve their electricity crisis.
At the Eskom offices in Diepkloof, residents met up with Vusi Maphalala from the Key Accounts Department on April 11.
Customer Relations Manager, Henry Mtshali was also expected to be at the meeting but didn’t show up due to personal issues.
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This meeting follows countless other meetings and marches by the residents to try and get the attention of the power utility to restore their electricity which has been out since 2020.
As part of the agreement, residents have paid R500 per affected household to try and speedup the process of having their transformer fixed.
“The community only reached the Differed Payment Arrangement (DPA) towards the end of December 2023 and the replacement process only started when the community had reached the 60% threshold as outlined in the attached customer bulletin,” said Eskom’s Communications and Stakeholder Manager, Amanda Qithi.
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“Subsequently when we were ready to install the transformer, we discovered that the network in this area had been vandalised hence the delay in the restoration of supply.”
Residents showed up to the meeting with notes they have been making about this issue since it started and receipts with their reference numbers proving when they made payments to Eskom.
Electricity was not the only issue that was on the agenda during the meeting. There were two more matters discussed including that of Gogo Sara Dhlamini who doesn’t have access to basic services and a petition about the maintenance of infrastructure.
These issues are what brought a representative from the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, Nicola du Plessis to the meeting.
“We will keep on fighting this to ensure that basic human rights are sent through to all the people of Protea South. Electricity is not political but it is a basic human right,” said du Plessis.
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Maphalala ended the meeting by promising residents that the issue of Gogo Dhlamini will be resolved soon and the contractor will start working on the electricity issue by next week.
He also urged residents to stop giving money to people even if they are Eskom employees to help fix electrical issues.
“As Eskom we discourage the paying of people to fix electricity for you because those people make sure they fix the transformers and temper with them so they can always come back as their way of having a source of income,” concluded Maphalala.
