Work underway to restore power supply to frustrated Olievenhoutbosch residents
Ward 106 councillor Kenny Masha said that teams were currently on-site and were beginning excavations to repair a cable fault.
Residents who have been without power for more than a week in Olievenhoutbosch should have their supply restored soon.
The frustrated residents held a service delivery protest on Monday morning, blocking traffic on the R55 with a fire barricade.
Residents said that they could no longer tolerate the lack of service that they were paying for.
Ward 106 councillor Kenny Masha, who was on-site with the repair teams, said that Olievenhoutbosch ext. 13, 23, 24, 25, and 26 were still affected by a cable failure.
“At the moment we can’t provide an ETA (estimated time of arrival) as the teams need to establish how the repair process will progress.”
However, Masha said that he hoped that supply would be restored by late afternoon or evening on Wednesday.
“The 150mm main feeder cable was fixed yesterday. This was for the substation in Rua Vista which supplied ext. 36 and Thatchfield.”
He said that the repairs of that substation were completed around 18:00 on Tuesday, and the communities were energised just after 20:00.
“They had gone for seven days without a stable supply of electricity,” said Masha.
He said the area was put on a power rotation schedule while repairs were being done.
The outage was caused by cable failure at the Noord Wes substation.
“On the Noord Wes substation, we currently have two main feeder cables instead of three running, meaning that we do not have the supply capacity to provide power to the whole area.
“Teams are also dealing with smaller ring feeder cables on three panels which supply the extensions currently affected.”
He told Rekord that the main problem for the community was a dilapidated ring feeder that was over 25 years old.
“The insulation of the cable is very poor, leading to the cable heating up and as a result, the cable gets damaged,” Masha said.
“The other two affected ring feeders have been victims of many cable thefts, meaning that several joints of the cable are exposed to water-logged ground.”
The water penetrates the cable leading to the failures.
He said that this type of failure happens very frequently, which frustrates the locals.
“I have raised these issues in regional forum meetings, I’ve raised it in council. Right now I have even written to province [Gauteng government] to intervene as the state of city finances are making things harder.”
Once the root causes of the cable failure were addressed, Masha said supply to the area would stabilise.
He urged residents to check local communication groups for updates on the power outage.
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