Residents of Germiston were once again plunged into darkness last week.
Numerous suburbs were affected by the outage, with power going out either last Tuesday or Wednesday, and only being restored to all areas late on Thursday night.
Ward 92 councillor Graham Gersbach and Ward 36 councillor Wendy Morgan sent a number of queries to the municipality requesting feedback on the outage.
The GCN also requested comment regarding the outage from the metro more than once, but at the time of going to press, none had been received.
Along with suburbs, scores of individual businesses and houses in ‘unaffected’ areas were also without power according to the ward councillors.
Morgan told the GCN that on Friday a number of these individual businesses and houses had still not been restored, but they would apparently be attended to.
“Ward 36 residents remain frustrated at not having their power restored,” said Morgan.
“Individual houses and streets are now on day three of being without power.
“The outages have been escalated to the divisional head on numerous occasions and he has now responded and said they will be attended to, but how long must these residents still wait?
“Residents were held to ransom on Thursday supposedly due to overtime not being paid to Ekurhuleni employees.
“Does the energy team actually work during normal working hours or are they just waiting for overtime hours?
“It is understandable that the teams are short-staffed during lockdown, but for the first three weeks of the lockdown during April, we definitely did not have these issues and outages were responded to quickly.”
Lambton Gardens resident Chris van Schalkwyk said that their power had gone off at 3.30pm on Wednesday.
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Numerous suburbs left in the dark in Germiston
“When you phone the call centre you are just told that it is a cable fault,” he said.
“That is the excuse we get every time there is a power outage. Surely by now they would have replaced the ‘faulty’ cable, as we do pay our bills.”
A resident of Fishers’ Hill Francine Maritz voiced her concern about the matter.
“It is indeed a sad day that yet again we are without electricity in various areas in Germiston, with no resolution in sight.
“When you try to phone the call centre they don’t even bother to answer the phones, what if it was an emergency?
“While people are desperately trying to make a living during lockdown and now we are left without power.
“There is a hospital in our area and they had to run generators to keep people alive.
“Will the City take responsibility should someone die as a result of this power outage?”
Another affected resident Emilia Duarte-Potgieter told the GCN that the power had gone off in Walkers Street in Primrose last Tuesday at about 7pm, but only individual houses had been affected as well as a few flats in two blocks of flats in the area.
She reported the problem on the My Ekurhuleni App immediately and only received a reference number on Wednesday morning.
“I have sleep apnoea and rely on a machine to breathe at night,” Duarte-Potgieter said.
“My backup battery went flat so I could not sleep as I was too scared that my body would not wake me up.
“Our gate motor battery also went flat and our security was jeapordised.
“Is the municipality going to pay out claims as our security is jeapordised due to their lack of service?
“What if people are burgled, hijacked or get killed due to their gate motors not working and they now have to open their gates manually leaving them exposed to criminals?”
Another resident who did not want to be named said his home in Barbara Road, Homestead had been without power since 11.45am on Wednesday.
“It is very frustrating and we cannot get through to the call centre, no one answers the phones,” he said.
Residents across the city also took to the GCN’s Facebook page to voice their frustrations and concerns about the power outage with most people saying it was a disgrace and that the energy department was a disaster.
“There needs to be a full investigation into the causes and duration of each outage.
“Also many isolated areas remain out after every power outage and loadshedding and these smaller areas are nearly always the same areas.
“The department needs to better manage electricity maintenance.
“I will be asking questions around various issues to both the human resources and energy departments, as well as the relevant MMCs.
“Michele Clarke will be asking questions of the COGTA Minister,” said Gersbach.
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Contact the newsroom by emailing: Melissa Hart (Editor) germistoncitynews@caxton.co.za, Leigh Hodgson (News Editor) leighh@caxton.co.za or Busi Vilakazi (Journalist) busiv@caxton.co.za.
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