The Randburg Service Delivery Centre (SDC) apologises to the residents of Bordeaux North, following an unfortunate incident on the network which left residents without power supply for more than 10 days on Orchard Avenue and surroundings.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena explained that the entity attended to the outage and the power supply has been restored.
“The team attended to the outage soon after it was reported. Investigations were conducted on-site where it was discovered that a contractor that was cutting trees in the area had damaged the cable that feeds customers on Orchard Avenue. The damage caused to the cable was extensive and resulted in a prolonged outage in the area which required massive repair work.”
He added that after the repairs were completed on site, and the restoration process was in progress, a further fault was discovered on the circuit.
“This resulted in more work that had to be conducted further extending the outage period. We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused during the outage and thank them for their patience as we worked on restoring their supply.”
Ward 102 councillor, Lucinda Harman explained that the people who were cutting the trees could not be identified and she was still investigating if they were contractors from City Parks.
“This was a big outage that remained unattended for 10 days. Every day I pushed for answers and resolution with poor communication from City Power. Technicians supposedly arrived and left without resolution for days on end. Whoever cut the tree did not follow the right process or wasn’t sufficiently trained and thus damaged City Power infrastructure.”
Liezl Kotze of the Bordeaux North Community Forum said that the residents were enraged, frustrated beyond belief and unable to get through to any entity for feedback, progress or assistance.
“We have many elderly as well as young children in our small suburb or Bordeaux North, power is essential to cook clean and keep safe. We have many small home businesses where clothes are sewn, food is cooked and the homeless is fed via a feeding scheme, all of which was on hold.”
“Many tickets were logged and were closed stating the fault had been attended to, but it was still out. We requested feedback from City Parks to determine if it was them, contracted to cut. The ward councillor couldn’t get a response,” she added.
City Park was contacted and asked if there are aware of this issue but unfortunately, they did not respond by the time we went to print.
City Power urges local communities and Randburg businesses to participate in its community partnership programme on electricity network infrastructure security to protect it to minimise power outages.
Details of the full programme are available on City Power’s website.
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