The maintenance operation at the West Acres electricity substation in Mbombela is running more than three hours late today, January 8.

The City of Mbombela (CoM) had initially promised residents the work would be completed by 17:00.

However, that has since changed.

The CoM said in an update shortly after 17:00 that technicians had already done some testing and promised that the electricity in certain areas would be restored.

There are unconfirmed reports, though, which suggests that by 16:00 only nine out of the 18 panels being replaced had been reconnected and that no input cables had been connected yet.

This publication sent some enquiries to the CoM’s spokesperson, Joseph Ngala, to establish if this meant the electricity would only be restored tomorrow, January 9.

Ngala had asked for an hour before he could give any further updates.

“We are still busy with tests. The network is also a challenge here,” he had said in a WhatsApp message at 18:44.

As of now, it remains to be seen if the technicians will eventually finish the work and restore the electricity tonight.

Ngala said the operation was urgently necessary because of the extremely old infrastructure, as some of the panels were reportedly more than 50 years old.