Outage crisis leaves Westridge residents powerless

RESIDENTS living in Westridge Park are still floundering in the dark as consistent power outages continue to plague the area. Residents say they experience outages almost every day of the week and are once again appealing to the city to investigate the cause of the outages and take action.

Resident, Daryl Kotze, who runs a busy home office in Essex Road, said they had been in the area for several months and the continuous power outages had had a huge impact on the business.

“I do video production and often have deadlines for big corporate companies where I have to work late into the night to ensure delivery on time. The past few months have had a very negative impact on my company's image in regards to getting our work done on time. And trying to explain to big clients about illegal connections is a nightmare. My baby has been very sick this past week and needed to be nebulised to help him breathe easier, with the power cuts we can’t even use the nebuliser,” said Kotze.

Kotze said residents felt the situation had reached a level of crisis and needed to be addressed.

In an email correspondence with a resident recently, a municipal official said the the Electricity Department and Housing Department were on track to find a solution to the problem and had had a meeting with the councillor to try and address the issue of electrification.

At the meeting, it was agreed that the Housing Department would submit all applications for electricity once they had completed their numbering and provided the layout. He said at present, the department was still waiting for the Housing Department to submit thi, and they would then electrify all RDP houses that met the requirements. He said he believed the problem would be eliminated because most people would have legitimate electricity.

The official assured the resident that in the interim, the Electricity Department would continue to do routine clean ups and restore the supply as quickly as possible.

The representative said he would arrange a major operation to take place and had already contacted all relevant departments to plan a meeting to do an operation in the area and had assigned a forensic investigator to make arrests on anyone who had illegal connections on the network.