DA takes Kempton Park’s electricity woes to parliament

The DA’s Michael Waters, MP and Lethabong Constituency head, handed in a petition to parliament on Thursday regarding the unacceptable high number of electricity outages in Kempton Park, reports Kempton Express.

“We are calling on the portfolio committee on cooperative governance and traditional affairs (COGTA) to investigate the matter, and to call Ekurhuleni Metro before the portfolio committee,” he said.

According to him, the electricity crisis in the City of Ekurhuleni is much worse than originally feared, with infrastructure crumbling due to a lack of maintenance.

ALSO READ: Ekurhuleni metro denies claims power will only be restored by Friday

The latest electricity crisis crippled suburbs in Kempton Park for seven days, despite promises made by the metro’s head of department for energy, Mark Wilson, on Radio 702, Waters said.

“The silence of the mayor, Mzwandile Masina, and the two members of the mayoral committee responsible for electricity, water, sanitation and energy, Tisetso Nketle and infrastructure services Masele Madihlaba, had been deafening and was indicative of the uncaring ANC-led administration,” Waters said in a statement.

“One has to ask why the metro had not utilised its mobile substation on a rotation basis to help alleviate the suffering of residents. And if they are unable to use the mobile unit in this instance, then what is the point of having it at all?

“In addition, questions have to be asked as to whether the metro has approached Eskom to rent additional mobile units and if not, why not. The city of Johannesburg did this recently when they had a similar size outage.”

According to Waters, the lack of routine maintenance at the Glen Marais substation and adjacent power lines prevented the metro from bypassing the substation and connecting residents to other sources of power. The metro failed to repair the Glen Marais-Van Riebeeck Park cable from July 31 last year.

“Had the cable been repaired, they could have bypassed the Glen Marais substation and provided electricity from the Spartan substation,” said Waters.

He added that the metro purchased Chinese equipment at a cost of R10 million, which local technicians did not know how to use. The Chinese had to be brought in to assist.

“One also has to ask why foreign suppliers were used when local companies could have supplied the equipment.”

The Glen Marais substation could not be turned off during recent load shedding as the risk was too high due to poor maintenance, Waters explained, as it might have exploded while turning the power on and off.

“The mayor needs to come clean with the residents of Kempton Park and take political responsibility. The residents deserve answers.”

The city of Ekurhuleni was approached for comment on June 20, but has not yet responded.

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