Ivory Park residents demand results
SUNNINGHILL – Ivory Park residents took to sunninghil to protest about their electricity problems.
Ivory Park Ward 79 community members took their grievances to Eskom’s Megawatt Park in Sunninghill on 28 August after weeks without electricity.
The community members said that they are tired of paying for Eskom’s services but not receiving electricity. Ward 79 councillor, Thompson Maluleka, who accompanied the community members, said that he himself has been without electricity for almost seven weeks. “I was here on 24 August to report the matter of which I was told they would take it up with upper management and attend to the transformer which defaulted. They never came to fix it.”
Mabs Ndebele, a Ward 79 resident, said that whilst Eskom feels strongly about punishing those who do not pay their electricity bills, those who pay are affected by the delay in fixing the infrastructure. “We want whoever is inside to come outside and tell us what is going to happen. If they do not come and address us, we are not going to leave.”
The Ivory Park residents said that they would not leave the Eskom gates until their call is attended to.
Reneiloe Semenya, the Gauteng Eskom spokesperson said that due to the high volume of equipment that has failed in Gauteng, the work is executed in phases and is informed by the scope of work and material availability. “The normalisation work (repair and restoration of supply) is planned over a period of three months starting in areas with the oldest network equipment failures that have complied with the audit process and adhere to safety guidelines. We have healthy stock levels, however, with high equipment failure rate it will risk the response time.”
Semenya explained that the process begins with the network audits which is aimed at determining the extent of the damage to Eskom’s electricity infrastructure and further establish the resources required to undertake the repair work. The audit process includes, but is not limited to, the removal of illegal connections, meter bypasses and the issuing of remedial fines to customers who are found to have tampered with the infrastructure. “The duration of the audit, therefore, is dependent on the findings in the field and full payments are to be made by customers issued with remedial fines, or deferred payment arrangement forms are submitted to Eskom.”
Semenya said that Eskom is working around the clock to ensure the availability of resources and material to restore supply in the affected areas. “We acknowledge that there are constraints during this period and we would like to appeal to the members of the public to be patient as we work on repairs and restoration of supply.”
Some community members said that they were told to pay R6 000 each for their transformers to be fixed. Semenya said that in an instance a customer is found to have tampered with a meter, a fine of R6 052 is issued to the customer. The customer supply is only restored once the full payment has been made or the customer has signed a deferred payment agreement, in which case the customer can pay the fine within a six month period. “In addition, customers’ purchasing pattern is closely monitored and where there is any suspicion a follow-up visit is made to the customer. This is not money to fix transformers.”
Semenya concluded, “The configuration of our network does not make it practical to have dedicated supply lines to paying customers and, as such, it not feasible to single out paying customers and service them separately.”
Details: Eskom 011 800 8111.
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