Electricity to Mbombela in process of being restored following seven-hour power outage
The outage was allegedly caused by a theft attempt of an electric cable that services parts of the CBD and surrounding areas.
Electricity will start to be restored to Mbombela as the municipality has started switching the power to the affected sections back on.
Parts of the Mbombela CBD and surrounding areas have been without power since 07:00 this morning (March 10) following an attempt by an unknown number of thieves to steal some cables.
The spokesperson for the City of Mbombela, Joseph Ngala, said the cables had been badly burned an damaged due to the attempted theft, and that it would take between six and 10 hours to repair.
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However, by 14:00, Ngala said the power was being switched on and that they would be monitoring the process. Parts of the city were without power for seven hours.
As one entered Mbombela earlier today, the rumbling of generators could be heard around every corner as businesses and residents tried to operate and go on with their lives as usual. Lowvelder spoke to a few businesses affected by the power outage.
Pappa’s Kitchen’s assistant manager, William Maduane, said it was using a generator in order to continue business. “Everything is working and we are doing business as usual, but we cannot serve chips or coffee,” he said.
“It is, however, very costly to keep the generator running because of how expensive petrol is now.”
Another affected business, Abeega Roadhouse, said it was also operating off a generator to serve customers, but that it could not serve ice cream or pizza until the electricity came back on. The business also mentioned how expensive it was to keep the generator running for such a long period of time.
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Gun Shoppe’s manager, Pierre Roos, said the whole situation was a “complete f*ck-up”. “I had to bring my generator from home just so I could switch on my computer. And running this generator all day is going to be very expensive,” he said. Roos said that the shop was in darkness, making it difficult to for customers to view items. He said the card machine was working, however.
