Witpoortjie residents fed-up with water and electricity woes
“After load-shedding, the power will be off again, this is nonsense and our ward councillor simply ignores us when we ask her about the problem.”
Frustration began to mount on Sunday, December 11 as some of Witpoortjie residents were left for almost a week without power.
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Residents decided to have a meeting and gathered in Jan Van Rooyen Street regarding the power and water problems and later decided to make their way to Penny Street where technicians were busy restoring power.
Visibly angry and frustrated, some members of the community attempted to confront the City Power personnel working at the Penny Street substation, but were quickly discouraged by other residents reminding them not to interfere with the technicians that are doing their job.
Residents discussed a way forward to address their electricity problems and argued that it takes forever to get the power restored.
“After load-shedding, the power will be off again, this is nonsense and our ward councillor simply ignores us when we ask her about the problem,” said one frustrated resident.
The Record contacted Ward 71 Councillor Rene Benjamin and asked her to comment on the matter and respond to the residents’ allegations.
Benjamin said she was also affected by the outages and indicated that her communication with the residents was affected.
Benjamin said she had to go sit at a coffee shop just to have a meeting as part of her attempts to get the power restored.
“There were about 300 messages that I had to respond to before my phone died again and I managed to put out the last update before my phone died, I had to sit at a friend’s house so that I can charge my phone and laptop so that I can provide updates.
“With regards to the issue, it needs to be emphasised that service delivery belongs to the entity and the councillor is not responsible.
“I can only provide updates I get them from City Power, if I don’t get updates, then I cannot provide the residents with information,” explained Benjamin.
In a media statement released by City Power on Sunday, December 11, the power utility apologised to its customers across the city who have been hit by widespread outages.
According to City Power, the recent storms and heavy rains as well as stage 5 and 6 of load-shedding have also worsened the situation.
“Our SDCs are hard at work tackling the medium voltage outages and a rising number of individual low voltage calls, most of which are from the areas that have been the hardest-hit by the recent heavy storms,” said City Power Spokesperson Isaac Mangena.
On Sunday, December 11 City Power opened up with over 4700 outage calls, with half of those over 24 hours.
On medium voltage calls, Roodetown Substation tripped as a result of two cable faults which affects supply to Westgate Substation, Penny Street, Strydom, Reiger, Oranje and Reefhaven satellite substations.
Pennyville substation also experienced a cable fault and an attempted cable theft affecting Fleurhof.
According to Mangena, City Power CEO has pulled in all the resources to the pressure points to ensure speedy response.
“We are aware and apologise for the inconvenience these outages have caused, and the teams are working tirelessly to address them.
“We urge affected customers to remain patient while we are battling the backlogs as a result of the heavy storms as well as load-shedding effects, we commit to treating all these outages with the urgency they deserve,” said Mangena.
