Nellmapius residents blame metro negligence for their spoilt food
“We have been without electricity for more than five days.”
As if load-shedding wasn’t bad enough, Mamelodi is being hit by cable thieves who are only making electricity problems worse for residents.
Recently, suspected addicts scavenged copper cables off a felled street light on the corner of Koporo Street and Hydrogen Crescent in Nellmapius Ext. 7.
“The pole was stripped of cables and meter boxes overnight,” said resident Ivy Manamela.
Manamela is also the founder of the nearby Horizontal daycare and preschool.
She said the pole had been left abandoned by the Tshwane metro electricity team replacing old wooden poles in the area.
“It had fallen, but remained propped up by the overhead live cables. The team had cut the cables off leaving neighbouring homes and my creche in the dark.”
She said she was unsure if the team actually intended to pick the pole up at a later stage, even though they promised to come back “to fix everything” when they left.
“They used insulation tape to cover the live wires hanging from the pole and left the felled pole in someone’s yard,” she said.
“We have been without electricity for more than five days now. This is affecting my creche and the 60 children I take care of as well as their families.
“It’s bitterly cold and I can’t keep the children warm. As a result, some parents have opted to take their children out of the school,” she said.
Manamela said she had been reduced to cooking and boiling water on an open flame.
Resident Mike Khagakgana said the metro team should have replaced the pole immediately before the criminals stripped the wires off of it.
“Now the metro will have to spend a lot of money replacing stolen property because of this negligence,” he said.
“They are costing the metro a lot of money. The next thing we will be told is that the metro is out of stock for poles and meter boxes.
“Residents have to spend days and nights in the cold without any power.”
Meanwhile, six houses in Borax Street, Nellmapius Ext. 8 were also without electricity after a link box supplying them exploded on June 24.
Residents reported the problem to the metro’s Mamelodi office that day but to date, nobody has come to repair the box.
Affected resident Sipho Dubazana said the box started smoking around 20:00 and then exploded only a few minutes later leaving six houses in the dark.
He said they spent the weekend freezing and have made phone call after call to the metro.
“We are still waiting,” said Dubuzana.
Resident Betty Mangena said she has had to throw away spoilt food – the few groceries she was keeping in her freezer before the blackout.
“We bought the groceries with our hard-earned money,” she said, adding that she blamed the metro for her loss.
“It is sad to throw the food you bought for the whole month out in the bin in one fell swoop.
“We know that our area experiences regular power cuts and we plan for those when we do groceries, but now it has been days.
“Surely, something has to be done.
“Who is going to replace our groceries? I have since lost the receipt.”
Tshwane metro spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said the team attended to the incident after the complaint of a pole allegedly knocked down by an unknown vehicle was received.
He said the team removed the pole from the street to unblock the road to restore the free flow of vehicles. They switched off the cable and made the area safe before they left until when they came back to perform the repairs.
“The team had to make the area safe and leave the site because they had outstanding jobs on their list, which was made worse by all the load-shedding that caused multiple power outages in the region. Load-shedding always stretches our already thin resources, which in turn prolongs the waiting time for repairs,” said Lindela.
“The repair job is scheduled for tomorrow [Thursday] when all the team members have rested after working throughout the night until 03:00 this morning dealing with Nellmapius sub-rehabilitation repair work,” he said.
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