Spoilt food, residents on oxygen concerned after Lenasia South power outage

Lenasia South residents have expressed anger and frustration after being left in the dark for over a day, with many saying they had to discard all their perishable goods because they had spoiled.

The outage hit the suburb at 2am during Sunday’s severe thunderstorm.

Several shops and takeaways without generators closed their doors, unable to serve customers due to the power outage.

Outage

City Power initially reported to the call, stating that it had conducted preliminary investigations to determine the cause of the outage.

“No fault has been identified on our network. There is a fault on Eskom’s side. One of the current transformers (CT) blew up during the restoration process. As a result, further investigations and repairs will be conducted tomorrow morning.

“This outage is affecting power supply to customers in Lenasia South and surrounding areas. We regret the inconvenience caused,” City Power said.

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Eskom

Eskom finally responded to the outage call about 6:30pm on Monday, but could not fix the fault.

“We are currently attending to an electricity outage affecting customers in Lenasia South. Technical teams are on-site conducting investigations to locate the source of the fault. At this stage, an estimated time of restoration cannot yet be confirmed,” Eskom said.

“Once the cause of the outage has been identified, an update, including the estimated time of restoration, will be communicated. We apologise for the inconvenience this causes.”

Anger

Residents took to social media to vent their anger and frustration.

Yasmin in a post to City Power said: “How long before an update on the Lenasia South power outage. Home oxygen is being used by my mum, and it’s been too long now that even the portable one is dying.”

Another resident, who preferred to remain anonymous, told The Citizen that she is likely to lose all perishable items she bought at month-end.

“I bought meat, fish and frozen vegetables, and I am not sure they are going to last until the power is restored.”

The current outage is affecting customers in Lenasia South, Lenasia South Extensions 1-4, Daxina Hospital, Lenasia South Hospital, and surrounding areas.

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