It’s been a bleak festive season so far, now including Christmas Day, for frustrated residents of Albersville and Port Shepstone who have been without power since 06:00 today.

The current areas affected are Berea, Port Shepstone CBD, Albersville, certain parts of Marburg and Newtown.

They have said that they’ve tried to contact Ray Nkonyeni Municipality (RNM) which provides power to these areas, but have failed. The Herald has also tried to get feedback but received nothing.

It’s not clear whether or not this outage is connected in any way to the prolonged unprotected strike RNM is affected by.

Fathima Moosa of the Marburg Ratepayers’ Association said it’s now been nearly six and a half hours (12:30) of no electricity in Port Shepstone.

“All we need is RNM to call Eskom Call Centre to switch that power on. How does something like this take so long?”

“Our officials cannot be reached. Who do we contact? No municipal manager, no HODs, no supervisors,” she lamented.

“We do not have an emergency call centre. Our calls are ignored and we need action. Our municipality is nonchalant. We need to take action as ratepayers, ” she said.

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