Residents of extension 20, eMbalenhle, said they spent four weeks without electricity because of a burnt transformer and cables.
They said they reported the problem to the municipality but were told the municipality doesn’t have cables and is awaiting a new transformer
that will be installed in the area.
“We have no electricity in these freezing weather conditions. The municipality keeps promising us electricity will be restored since before the end of last month, but nothing is happening.
“We even lost hope for a newly switched mobile transformer because we thought it was going to bring changes in our electricity crisis but it has become worse,” said Mr Lucky Ngwenya, a resident.
Residents said municipality employees are now using their electricity crisis to make money, requesting each household pay R20 before the problem can be solved.
“Some residents collected the money and gave it to them. What is suspicious is that the municipality bakkie collected the money at night. Why aren’t they collecting during the day?
“When we told them some of us aren’t working and won’t be able to pay, they said they want all the money before they can start working. So we are trying to get the money.
“The municipality electricity network is not maintained either, and it poses a danger to us. Cables were installed over our houses, so should those cables start to burn, all occupants in that house will die.
“We are also questioning the qualifications of employees in the electricity department of our municipality,” said Mr Ngwenya.
Residents said the municipality needs to act before they lose patience.
A community member who wanted to remain anonymous said the cause of the outages is illegal connections.
He said in their area the majority of the houses are connected illegally, which causes the electricity to trip and cables to burn because of overloading.
“We always see people climbing municipality poles to connect illegally. As a community, we need to understand the consequences of illegal connections to the electricity network are. We are putting our lives and families at risk of electrocution or fire.
“Right now we don’t have a transformer because it was overloaded by us, not the municipality. Some of us wish the municipality acted harshly towards connecting illegally.”
Mr Donald Green, acting head of communication at the municipality, said they don’t have a reported case of municipality employees who demand money from the community to do their work.
He said the community is encouraged to report these cases to law enforcement agencies or the municipality, as it is a crime.
Mr Green said municipality technicians are attending to electricity backlog and outages in eMbalenhle.
He urged residents to report all municipality-related problems to their call centre and receive a reference number.
