Power issues leave areas in the south in the dark
Businesses and residents were forced to spend money to keep lights on.
Residents of Ward 23 in the south of Johannesburg are at their wits’ end after recent power issues at various substations in the area left residents without power for days.
This resulted in residents and businesses losing money due to the outages with residents forced to use generators just to keep fridges from defrosting.
Isaac Mangena, spokesperson for City Power said, “Our infrastructure is severely under threat with theft and vandalism adding to the many existing challenges. Therefore, City Power has contracted armed response units tasked with increasing visible patrols. However, due to the magnitude of the network infrastructure, it is impractical to protect every piece of the network.
“City Power is embarking on a drive to collaborate with CPF and other community-based structures to protect the network. Collaborative partnerships with communities, sector policing forums, the private security sector and law-enforcement agencies are the only sustainable solution to protect our electricity network infrastructure.”
Mangena further said, “In addition, City Power is replacing copper cables with aluminium to reduce the spate of theft. Vandalism and cable theft are major challenges to our infrastructure. When criminal elements affect the infrastructure it becomes a costly expenditure. As it stands the city incurs a loss worth R2bn in non-technical losses.
“Load-shedding also has crippling effects on our ageing infrastructure adding detrimental effects on the City of Johannesburg electrical grid. Our ageing infrastructure needs a major upgrade that will cost around R26bn. The impact of load-shedding is so severe on the ageing infrastructure that it immediately reduces its lifespan.
“Residents are encouraged to report essential infrastructure-related matters to the City Power Security Control on 011 490 7900/7911/7553 or their local law enforcement.”
Councillor for Ward 23, Tyrell Meyers said: “The problem with the power started with cable theft because as soon as the cables are replaced, the older cables started to show issues. Most of the areas are now up and running with just one line left to be replaced.”
