Dent Road residents in Driehoek took to the streets to burn tyres and block roads to demonstrate their grievances after a week without power.

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Residents had no power from June 21.

On Saturday they demonstrated their grievances by blocking the roads.

According to a long-time resident Andry Botha, Dent Street has been troubled by continuous power interruptions.

“Every time I complain they send a technician to my house to check if I have illegal connections or not.

“This year we started to mark off days on the calendar where we didn’t have power,” said Botha.

“In February we had no power for two days, in March it was three, in April it was six, four days in May and seven days in June,” he said.

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Botha said the community is getting frustrated about the constant interruptions.

“Residents came together on June 26 morning for a community meeting.

“We went to the electrical depot on Junction Road. We forced them to send a technician who only identified the problem,” said Botha.

“Anyone can understand our frustrations. Food has been going off in our fridges for days.

“Not everyone has the luxury of owning a generator. I have a big generator but we can’t run it for more than eight hours otherwise we damage it.

“I make ice and sell it for extra cash since I am not employed. Without power, I can’t make the ice and as a result, I am losing my only source of income,” said Botha.

He said when he used to work in the municipality they used to replace a transformer in four hours.

“Nowadays a simple cable fault takes the municipality hours or days to fix,” said Botha.

“This area needs an electricity upgrade as people have built more houses that can overload the system.

“We changed the globes to rechargeable ones.

“We broke away from the electrical appliances because the power is becoming more unreliable. Gas is also getting expensive,” said Botha.

Andre Steyn runs a business and is also affected by power interruptions.

“We have five permanent employees. With the constant power outages I literally pay people to sit and do nothing for most of the day,” said Steyn.

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“No power means no production. We are losing manufacturing hours and income. Fuel is expensive to run the business on a generator.”

Ward 36 Clr Wendy Morgan condemned the actions of residents and called for calm.

She encouraged residents to continue reporting service complaints to the customer centre and the Ekurhulerni App.

Morgan said residents were affected by a cable fault and technicians were delayed and denied access by demonstrators who burnt tyres.

GCN requested comment from the City of Ekurhuleni by July 1.

At the time of going to print no comment had been received.