Dozens of households in Atlasville have been left frustrated and uncertain about when their electricity will be restored after cable faults plunged parts of the suburb into darkness during the early hours of July 12.

Affected residents have today entered their third consecutive day without power, raising concerns over the prolonged outage and the metro’s response.

Ward 23 councillor Gerald Goslin said he personally reported the outage to the relevant municipal department on Sunday and escalated the matter to the HOD and even the MMC for Energy. However, he was informed that the department did not have replacement cable available to repair the damage.

“I have repeatedly pushed for feedback and action, but the latest update from the department was that they are still working to procure enough replacement cable,” said Goslin.

He added that he had also contacted a local supplier to determine whether they could assist in sourcing the required cable.

“They told me that they do have cable available and asked me to share their details with the engineer so that the necessary arrangements could be made. Yet the community is still languishing in the dark,” he said.

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According to Goslin, municipal teams have managed to restore electricity to a small section of Atlasville, but the majority of affected residents remain without power.

The prolonged outage has left many residents frustrated as they await updates on when electricity will be restored.

A resident who contacted the Boksburg Advertiser expressed frustration over the ongoing outage, saying residents feel there has been a lack of urgency in resolving the matter.

“Parts of Atlasville have now been without power for three days and counting. Nobody is giving councillors any information, and there is no sense of urgency in sourcing new cable,” said the resident.

The resident added that households have been affected by food losses due to fridges and freezers being without power, while concerns have also been raised about security risks caused by the outage.

“The MMC was going to resolve this yesterday, but nothing has been done,” added the resident.

The newspaper contacted the metro for comment regarding the delay in repairs and the reported shortage of replacement cable.

In response to enquiries, the metro said the area was experiencing multiple cable faults at different locations and that teams had decided to replace the entire length of affected cable.

“The team will resume this work today and power is hopefully expected to be restored late tonight or in the early hours of tomorrow,” said metro spokesperson, Zweli Dlamini.

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