East electricity problems persist
“We have people who have gone for three days without electricity”
Electricity outages remain a problem in the east of Pretoria with some residents having gone for days without any power.
Local ward councillor Siobhan Muller said the situation was getting worse in her ward.
“We have people who have gone for three days without electricity,” she said.
“We have power fluctuations in Clark and Stella streets at the end of Waterkloof near Brooklyn, which have been persistent since Monday.”
Muller said the metro had scaled down service delivery staff, working only with “skeleton staff”, which made it difficult for teams attend to issues on time.
She said her ward in Lynnwood north and south, as well as Waterkloof, were the highest hit areas. She said electricity in those areas hardly stayed on for longer than 24 hours.
“We have outages daily. I can’t think of a day in this past few weeks, where we have not had issues with power,” she said.
“A lot of the outages are seemingly related to voltage problems. The teams tell us that they do not have voltage testers that work.”
Muller sad street lights also remained unfixed.
READ MORE: Parts of east still without power
Lynnwood resident Carin Grant said she had been without electricity for more than three days, and could not get any answers on what the problem was.
Grant said she has reported the outage to the metro “more than six times”, but still received no response.
“Every time I call they give me a new reference number, which shows that my previous call was never noted,” she said.
“Why does the city never come to my house to check what the issue might be?
“I live with a pensioner and for her to bath in a basin every day is not right. I am frustrated.”
She said a kind neighbour who had electricity allowed her to connect to their grid and now she could selectively use a fridge to avoid any food spoilage.
READ MORE: Tshwane teams worked tirelessly to restore power after outage
Affected areas include Olympus, Zwavelpoort, Faerie Glen and Garsfontein.
Muller said ongoing administration battles have affected how they as councillors did their work.
“We officially aren’t councillors,” she said.
“We have city officials who refuse to speak to us, they do not reply to our emails or those of residents.
“It’s making it almost impossible to get service delivery for the residents.”
The Tshwane metro had not commented at the time of going to press.
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