Anger over Parkmore power outage
PARKMORE residents and business owners want answers to the erratic power outages in the area, with the current outage now in day three.
Jack Levy, whose family owns a printer business, contacted the Chronicle on 22 July querying a power failure in the area which had persisted since the previous day.
“Sandton is one of the financial capitals in South Africa. We pay good money to be here and for a national server to disappoint us in this way is unacceptable,” he said.
According to Ward 103 councillor Vincent Earp, power in Parkmore has been unreliable “for a while”, particularly in June and July.
He said he had been in contact with a business owner in the area who was concerned about the frequency of power disruptions, and who was losing valuable revenue with each outage. “Businesses needed a steady supply of power to prosper,” said Earp.
He added that he had been in contact with Eskom with each outage. “They say they will send technicians to deal with the problem, but once the outage is fixed, a few days will go by and the same thing will happen again.”
Levy confirmed an increase in power outages in the area over recent months. “Each time myself or a colleague has contacted the authorities, we have been given different reasons for the problem. In one instance, we were told the branch from a tree had interrupted the power supply. Most recently, we were told a generator had blown up.”
City Power spokesperson Louis Pieterse was not available for comment.
At 12pm on 23 July a resident reported that he had been told that City Power had identified the problem and power would be restored later that evening, the end of day three of the outage.
