Assagay residents suffer rolling blackouts
The community has power outages that range from two hours up to 10 hours.
WHILE nationwide loadshedding is a gripe for most South Africans, residents in Assagay are forced to suffer a worse fate.
Following loadshedding time slots, they would need to endure several more hours without power as the substations in the area either blow or trip.
The community put together a spreadsheet of the faults logged since January last year and noted there were 109 instances up to early November this year.
Jonathan Johnston, who moved into the area in February with his family this year, said, “We noticed immediately there were frequent power outages in the area. There are hundreds of logged faults and one mention of a monkey that short-circuited something.”
Johnston then joined the neighbourhood watch groups as well as the street patrollers and one welcome message read: ‘Welcome to the dead zone’. He was also told residents had complained about the power outage issue for years.
“When there is loadshedding it is even worse. It will come back on and, within a few minutes, it drops again for a few more hours. People report on the chat groups that a bang is heard and a substation has blown in the area. The one substation up our road continues to trip,” he said.
The family reported they had, at times, been without power for stretches that would last up to 10 hours.
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“No one seems to want to investigate why this has become a problem and why the substation trips. Some months there is one outage and some months there are nine. No one can give an answer for when it will be resolved. Everyone pays their rates but where is the money going to if it is not being spent to repair, maintain and replace to stop these problems?” he questioned.
With the Covid-19 lockdown, he noted it had a major impact on his children’s online schooling as well as his work. With no fibre in the area, the residents rely on ADSL and, when there is no power, they have no internet connection.
The power outages have forced them to fork out on unnecessary expenditure such as takeout as they are unable to work around the unpredictable outages.
The eThekwini Municipality did not provide comment by the time of going to print.
Caxton Local Media Covid-19 reporting
