Half of Pretoria North still without power
A local ward councillor has said that some residents have been without power for as long as eight days.
Large parts of Pretoria North are still without power – some for as long as the past eight days – leaving residents fed up.
Last weekend, parts of Pretoria North lost power due to faulty breakers, while further areas were affected by cable theft during the week.
On Saturday, Rekord reported that an accident on the corner of Jack Hindon and Stasie Street in the early hours of the morning led to a power outage affecting the area.
Councillor Yolanda Duvenage said that the outage was challenging to address as the ongoing municipal strike was affecting personnel and contractors attending the sites.
“Our teams cannot go into the depots to collect vehicles, materials, or equipment,” Duvenage told Rekord.
“When they use other vehicles, or if contractors attend to the site, they are intimidated, threatened and they are sometimes assaulted.”
She explained that the areas affected by the eight-day outage were caused by faulty breakers, and other areas that have been off for days were due to cable theft.
On Saturday, Duvenage said that the widespread power outage in the north was caused by damaged power lines.
“The car was driven into a pole, severing some of our cables, and ripping some of the overhead lines out.”
Duvenage said that the accident site was secured by the morning, but that work to fix the issue only began by the evening due to the strike.
“Even private contractors are intimidated, so we have to place security with them at all times,” she said.
“We do not disclose their locations in order to protect them.”
She said that the local CPF with private security companies Cobra Tactical Ops and Maximum Security were assisting at the scenes.
“We were able to energize some areas last night at about 21:00.
“Due to the accident, the entire Van Riebeek sub tripped. Some of those mini-subs could be energized.”
She said that about half of Pretoria North now has power back, but the other half is still without electricity.
During the outage, Duvenage said that residents had come out to help.
Some residents offered to donate coffee, tea, cake, and pizza pies to community members who did not have the means to prepare food in their houses.
Residents in the North without power also wanted to make pledges to assist in paying the private contractors to repair the faults.
“This is not necessary as the city will cover the bill for these contractors.”
The councillor said that she was inspired by these residents. She said, “I am reminded of the saying, ‘It’s in the hard times that your character is proven, not in the easy times.’ I think our community has a lot of character, because of the way they came together and assisted each other.”
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