For more than a month now, many households in Kagiso have been without electricity, even those who have prepaid meters.
Residents wake up every morning wondering how they will face another winter’s day without power.
“For almost a month now there has been no electricity in their homes, and many neighbouring homes in Kagiso Extension 14, despite the fact that they are on prepaid power. This is happening in other parts of Kagiso too, and appears to be sporadic and rather targeted,” a Krugersdorp resident told the News after her domestic worker had told her about their power woes in Kagiso.
The domestic worker and her husband have called the local council and Eskom on numerous occasions to have the problem fixed, but to no avail. “They are told that technicians did fix the problem, and refuse to help them any further. There have been reports in their neighbourhood that technicians have attended to people’s problems only after they have paid the bribes those technicians demanded.
“In order to make calls to try and resolve the problem, they have to ask their neighbours who have electricity if they would charge their phones for them.” The News approached Eskom’s media relations department for urgent feedback. “Eskom is aware of the matter and is in the process of replacing faulty transformers. The process which involves conducting audits in all affected areas was interfered with by the protests which erupted in the areas.
Eskom is unable to operate in any area it deems unsafe for its employees. We wish to urge all communities to refrain from connecting electricity illegally, bypassing meters and tampering with the electricity infrastructure as these overload the network and result in the repeated failure and explosions of the Eskom assets,” Tumi Mashishi of Eskom said.
It is not clear if the matter has been resolved and if power has been restored to the affected households, but Eskom reminds members of the communities to use electricity sparingly so as to avoid overloading the network and the consequent load rotation.
