Residents across Kempton Park were once again left without electricity after a new, widespread outage struck on Saturday, January 10, adding to ongoing frustration following days of intermittent power supply in several suburbs.

According to Ward 17 councillor Simon Lapping, many residents had gone into Saturday evening hopeful that electricity would finally be restored to previously affected areas.

However, those hopes were dashed when a fresh outage occurred in the early hours of Sunday, this time impacting large parts of Kempton Park.

“Yet another day has come where areas of Kempton Park are without electricity,” Lapping said.

Lapping described the situation as an ongoing electricity crisis that residents and businesses have been forced to endure repeatedly.

“I’m beginning to think that war-torn Ukraine has more electricity available than Kempton Park,” he said.

“Residents are constantly subjected to outages, with little certainty or communication.”

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He further criticised what he described as ongoing operational challenges at the Kempton Park electricity depot, claiming that repair efforts are often delayed due to a lack of available materials.

“Based on the recent performance of the Kempton depot, officials are once again forced to scramble for spare parts because stores are permanently depleted,” Lapping said.

He warned that the continued instability of the electricity supply is having a direct economic impact, particularly on local manufacturers attempting to resume operations after the festive season.

“Manufacturers are coming out of the Christmas period ready to restart production, and instead everything has ground to a halt,” he said.

“This cannot carry on. Serious intervention is needed,” he said.

“Enough is enough.”

At the time of publication, further details regarding the cause of the outage and estimated restoration times had been requested from the City of Ekurhuleni, with no formal response yet received.