The Newcastle Municipality has issued a statement in relation to ongoing load-shedding.

In it, the municipality stated that as much as it had tried to manage load-shedding by switching off geysers, it was still struggling because of electrical systems which were being tampered with:

“It is with regret that some of the customers have tampered with the system, which defeats the purpose to avoid total cut-off. Yesterday and today, we continued switching off all the geysers in Newcastle to meet Stage 2, but the results are not promising.”

The municipality’s acting Municipal Manager (MM), Muzi Mayisela said some customers were bridging the system:

“Eskom has a system called the ‘ripple relay’, which controls geysers. What that means is, we are able to switch off all geysers without going to each house individually. We have however found out not enough energy is saved because some residents might have tampered with their systems and we can’t switch off their geyser. Therefore, we will start doing house-to-house inspections and if you are found guilty, you will be fined.”

The municipality has stated that any tampering constituted malicious damage to property, which is a criminal offence.

ALSO READ: Legal battle between Eskom and Newcastle Municipality comes to an end

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