Pta east power outage due to cable theft

The metro is giving the necessary attention to the power outage east of Pretoria, ward 46 councillor Pieter Van Heerden said on Thursday.

Van Heerden said faulty power lines caused a power to trip in the area, leaving residents in darkness.

“The power outage caused by loose overhead cables is noted and will be attended to,” added the councilor.

Resident Anthon Swanepoel said the electricity had been gone since early hours of the morning.

“Someone stole the cables around 02:00, and it was reported at the time. We don’t know how these thieves managed to steal the cables because there’s security patrol in the area.”

He said cable theft was becoming a norm in the area, citing another incident that took place barely two to three months ago.

“I suspect these criminals are slowly learning the security’s patrol times as they manage to steal cables while patrols are taking place. This is the second or third time cables are stolen and in the shortest space,” he said.

Another resident, Martin Kock, lambasted the metro saying it took more than 10 hours to come to replace the cable.

“This thing is really frustrating, the metro is not taking its residents seriously. There’s no way that one would report an incident in the early hours of the morning and they decide to only come now.

“Some of us are running businesses, how are we expected run them if they take forever to fix a cable?” asked Kock.

Van Heerden, promised that power supply would be restored as soon as officials were done replacing the stolen cable, however, he was not certain when that would be.

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