Week-long outage leaves Lydiana residents outraged
“Unfortunately the city water technicians will repair a damaged water pipe only today [Friday] which halted repair work on a damaged mini substation.
Pretorius Park, Brummeria, Lydiana and surrounding areas have been in complete darkness for a week.
The week-long power outage has outraged residents who complain that their electrical appliances were getting damaged and their food spoilt as a result.
Local ward councillor Pieter van Heerden said the outage is due to a mini-substation that feeds the transformer in the area being damaged.
Van Heerden said efforts to repair the mini-substation on Wednesday and Thursday failed because technicians encountered a problem.
“As the excavations were under way to get the second faulty cable repaired, a water pipe was damaged and that prevented the electrical work from continuing,” said Van Heerden.
Van Heerden said the pipe should be replaced first before electrical technicians can proceed.
“Unfortunately the city water technicians will repair the pipes only today [Friday], thereafter work on the cables can continue.”
“This has caused serious delays to the known time frame to restore power.”
ALSO READ: East hit by power-outages once more after faulty feeding mini-substation
Van Heerden urged residents to remain patient as technicians work hard to solve the problem.
“The city’s electricians will work on a strict timeframe to get power back,” Van Heerden said.
The residents also had to contend with stage 6 load-shedding.
Other areas in the east of Pretoria were also plagued by power outages this week.
A transformer exploded in Menlo Park on Tuesday, May 9.
Tshwane MMC for utilities and regional operations and coordination, Themba Fosi said load-shedding damages the city’s electricity infrastructure and could lead to prolonged power outages.
“The raised levels of load-shedding are a crisis for our municipality, affecting both our electricity network as well as our ability to attend to outages,” Fosi warned.
Stage 6 load-shedding means that rolling blackouts will affect Tshwane two to three times per day for a minimum of six hours.
READ: Metro blames load-shedding for transformer explosion in east of Pta
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