Councillors vow that Alberton will have no power outages

You will never guess what, yes, the same areas have been without power since April 11.

I am not sure about the timeline but I can tell you it is long because the produce in our fridge is starting to go off.

The following areas are affected: Alberton North, Florentia, Verwoerdpark, New Market Park, Raceview, New Redruth, Southcrest and parts of General Alberts Park.

On April 11 we were told it was the transformer and that the Eskom technicians must test the oil of the transformer. They are still busy testing and at this moment we as residents must pay the price for increased tariffs and we have no electricity.

We are buying less food due to the power problems and now the little bit of food that we have in the freezer will go off due to these maintenance issues. Once again it is the Alrode substation that is having problems. When they fixed it on March 27, did they fix it properly?

Why are we again without power at the same substation? On April 12, Clr Samantha Nair sent me another WhatsApp: “As I have indicated yesterday, we are running our substation with a very limited capacity, we are still waiting for Eskom to finalise their test and switch back the second transformer”.

I give her a lot of credit because she has kept me updated continuously and I appreciate that.

It is just not acceptable and it is costing us as consumers money. We are not even talking about the businesses that are relying on the power to still make some money to survive. Eskom will not reimburse us for the loss of food and equipment due to their half-done jobs.

It is disgusting and sickening that they think they are entitled to a 12% increase and they cannot supply the power.

I suppose we have to get used to this – a country without water, electricity, jobs, and food and deteriorating not only day by day but hour by hour.

I cannot say that I am a proud South African today because our country is not progressing, it is going backwards at a rapid rate.

People are getting paid to do their jobs and they are just not interested.

It is heartbreaking to see our country that was the best among other countries – deteriorating and going backwards like this.

Aniel van Tonder

Local councillors’ feedback

The Alberton Record spoke to the councillors of the affected areas during the time of the power outages.
Ward 94 Clr Samantha Nair and Ward 37 Clr Ivan Naidoo said that the power outages were caused by tripping transformers.

“As soon as we got the messages from residents we contacted the city’s departments and they were dispatched to attend to the query and sorted it out as soon as they could. However, the problem seemed to be of transformer five which falls directly under Eskom and that is where our hands we tied,” they said.

The councillors contacted Eskom and officials from Eskom did not pitch on the agreed time and this forced the City of Ekurhuleni to enforce a six-hour load rotation among affected hours.

“Later, we managed to meet with Eskom officials and they investigated what was the problem. They found out that transformer five moisture in oil and this caused the transformer to dysfunction,” the local councillors said.

In a recent communication between the Alberton Record and the local councillors, the councillors ascertained that it has been two weeks since Eskom fixed the transformer and locals have not been experiencing power faults.

“We guarantee that from now onwards no power outages will be experienced in Alberton as we were also ensured by Eskom that they have thoroughly fixed what was a problem since last year,” said Nair.