Suburbs from Allen’s Nek to Honeydew suffering constant electricity abuse

No streets have been left untouched by the electricity trauma.

Stuck in a never-ending loop checking load-shedding schedules, switch-flipping, and fluctuating anger at prolonged outages, residents in every suburb from Weltevreden Park to Ruimsig have long tales to tell. Uncertain about where to turn to have their problems addressed, streets have gradually begun to fill with disgruntled ratepayers while tension over perceived inaction grows.

Wanting to show authorities that they too are not to become a forgotten community, Honeydew Residents Association and residents near Peter and Cypress Roads held their peaceful demonstration, on February 16. The frustrated residents gathered at the corner of Peter Road and Short Road armed with placards in the hope of getting the attention of those flipping the switches.

As with many suburbs, the situation has drastically deteriorated since December last year. An area notoriously plagued by cable theft, the regular unplanned outages have been a strain on households and businesses. Resident Magda Maasdan stated in the past few weeks they had gone without power for roughly 120 hours with the most recent being a six-day outage that forced Magda and her husband Jopie to spend R1 200 on diesel for that week.

One of the causes of the outage was the snapping of a cable running across a low-lying bridge on Cypress Road. Heavy rains brought a torrent of water that washed away the exposed cable, a situation residents warned was a possibility. Coupled with a blown transformer, the Peter Road substation was in critical condition, leaving the surrounding areas dark for several days.

A short distance from the Emily Hobhouse Street protests, one block of homes sat idle while everything around them progressed. The power at a complex in Krediet Avenue tripped around 02:00 on Saturday, February 12, and a week later still had not been restored. What perplexed the people of Mountain View South was that days into the outage they realised they were the only section of the street that was off, neighbours on all sides of the complex had electricity.

READ MORE: Residents of Emily Hobhouse Street leave powerless homes to demand restoration of electricity supply

Going into their sixth straight day without electricity, residents are showering at family, meat and other perishables were being stored in the fridges of friends and dirty washing pilled up in homes. Bordered by an open field, the front gate stands open and the electric fence is reduced to mere wire, posing a security risk.

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“Every day is a different story. We just want City Power to be consistent,” said resident Roger Timothy, describing the feedback he and his neighbours were receiving.

For a third afternoon in succession, the electricity tripped in Allen’s Nek on February 17. The second of those trips left the suburb disconnected for much of the weekend and after the power did not return after load-shedding on Monday, February 13, residents pounced on technicians at the corner of Van Vuuren Street and Wilhelmina Avenue. After quizzing the technicians and proposing a range of temporary fixes, residents were informed that Eskom had failed to restore the Block 11 suburbs remotely.

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Allen’s Nek resident, Roland Walsh, vented his frustration, saying, “These guys don’t care a damn about us. We are unable to put food on the stove because we are scared the power will go off. We can’t put the washing in the machine in case the power goes off while the machine is full of water. We cannot keep food because we don’t know how long we will have no power. We must pay electricity for a cold geyser to heat up. This is an absolute disgrace and is unacceptable.”