Power woes in Kempton addressed

Community members gathered at the Wynand Marais Community Centre on Monday evening with hopes of getting more insight into Kempton Park’s power woes.

ALSO READ: Kempton residents FED-UP with power outages

The meeting was hosted by MMC Heather Hart, service delivery coordinator for Kempton Park. MMC of Energy Senzi Sibeko and senior energy department officials were present to give feedback on the recent but tedious blackouts in Kempton Park.

Other senior energy department officials were also present.

“I spoke with my HOD and said it is high time that officials understand the level of frustration that comes from residents, they need to hear it,” said Sibeko on Monday evening.

“They joined us today so that they take note and can understand where we need to improve, and which areas we need to address to improve the state of the energy department.”

ALSO READ: Power fully restored says CoE

Sibeko added the recent five-day power outage, January 21-26, affected five major substations namely Cargo, Van Riebeeck Park, Aston Manor, Spartan and Glen Marais.

“We had to deal with an oil-filled cable and the cables are decades old and it was difficult to source and find the material to fix that. Another challenge is that it is difficult to find people that have the skill to work with that particular oil-filled cable, which was among the challenges and/or delays experienced,” explained Sibeko.

“There are a lot of issues such as cable theft and vandalism around our areas and as Hart said we are faced with a serious challenge of our infrastructure being targeted.

“As the new administration, we are investigating sabotage on the infrastructure but we are still investigating it and we can’t give clear information as to whether that is true or not.

“The way things have been happening, you can’t help but question why things are happening the way they are.

There is a lot of information that tells us that we are the victim of sabotage.”
Sibeko mentioned that programmes and measures are being put in place going forward.

“Part of our planning is forming a team called Infrastructure Protection Unit, who will look into what is happening to our infrastructure,” added Sibeko.

ALSO READ: Kempton Park residents again suffer power outage

“We also have an Energy Master Plan that includes replacing the old infrastructure, but the old infrastructure can’t be replaced in over a month or a year. These things come with a budget.

“However, when you walk into an administration that has been syphoned by thugs who have been stealing from the system for the longest of time, you are frustrated because you walk in there and you want to fix things but you can’t because there is no money to do that.

“As the new administration, as enthusiastic as we want to fix the city, we are unable to do so because we have to work through a budget that has been passed and has already been cut. The challenges become bigger and bigger.”

It was also mentioned that the replacement of the oil-filled cable, with an estimated length of 20km, will take about three financial years.

“While working on the master plan, we decided to work on things that we know we can control. We also have to improve things that might not necessarily need the budget of billions. This includes turn-around-time, proper management, communication, proper oversight, discipline, commitment and work ethic,” said Sibeko.

Acting HOD of energy, Tshilidzi Thenga, apologised for the recent outage and also mentioned two critical parameters that are of importance.

“We are working on reducing the frequency of interruptions and minimising the duration of the interruptions,” said Thenga.

“There is a concern of staff shortage, mostly electricians. We are working on getting more staff.”

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