Still no light at the end of the tunnel for Withok residents

Withok has been grappling with ageing electrical infrastructure for years. Floors Street residents Santjie and Jeanne-Michéle White recall experiencing four consecutive festive seasons without power, with only the most recent holidays having a reliable supply.

Recently, as confirmed by PR Clr Riaan van Zyl, an underground power cable was installed to help combat these troubles; with more infrastructure upgrades in the works.

Santjie confirms the power woes have decreased for one section of Withok, but the area around Ergo still battles with regular outages.

“If you look at the electrical infrastructure, you would understand why the power goes out if there is a stiff breeze,” she said.

“Part of the problem is the workmanship is shoddy. One weekend they had to replace the same piece of cable three times, as every time they finished and turned the power on, the cable burned out and work had to start over,” she continues.

Santjie thinks the current system of appointing contractors for infrastructure maintenance and delivering services is ineffective.
It allows wasteful expenditure and does not have enough oversight and clear guidelines.

“If my gardener does a bad job, I would bring him back to fix it before I pay him. Why is it that the municipality pays a contractor before the job is completed, and then no one inspects the work to make sure it will hold up before the cheque is signed?”

Santjie believes a ‘congruence of incompetence’ causes the issues rather than the age of the infrastructure itself. Her father, as well as his neighbour the late Eric Holdtman (a former mayor of the town) paid for the first electrical cables installed in the area.

They paid for the installation while the municipality did the work. She says back then the municipality promised to pay back the costs as more properties were bought or leased and more people paid for the electricity. According to her, this promise was never honoured.

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Joanne Greyling on Floors Street thanked Van Zyl for being there for the area and always fighting for them in terms of service delivery.

“Councillors do nothing for us and he always goes out of his way to help us,” she explains.

Joanne said the power has been a problem for over 40 years and the Ergo side of Withok is still experiencing issues. Some plots in the area don’t fall under Ekurhuleni, but under Eskom, which makes resolving these issues even more difficult.

Retha Tibbets from Rennie Road on the Ergo side says they cannot go two weeks without the power failing, sometimes even one week.

She explains the contractors don’t close the trenches when the municipality repairs or replaces cables, which practically invites cable theft. It also leaves live wires exposed to the elements, risking outages and danger to people or animals in the area.

“We believe Withok, which is on the outskirts of Brakpan, is neglected in service delivery unless we physically pick up our phones and call them,” Retha says.

Various residents also complain that the app is frustratingly useless, because of the limited options for reporting issues.

Some even allege that this is on purpose, to discourage people from reporting issues.

The City of Ekurhuleni was requested to comment on the issues, as well as the plans and turnaround time for infrastructure upgrades, but by the time of going to press, nothing had been received.

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