Disgruntled residents of Naturena have blocked several roads with rocks and burning tyres after the area has been plagued by outages since last week Wednesday.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the outages were mainly due to multiple cable faults, with some due to a series of cable thefts in the area.

“Vandalism and theft of the infrastructure contributed to most of our outages.”

“However recently we have noted a lot of pressure on the network due to overloading. The overloading, which happens mostly during peak hours of the evening and morning is due to the illegal connections in the area, and also the increase in demand for power due to dropping temperatures,” he said.

Mangena says last night the overloading led to the breaker faulting leaving the area without power.

“Technicians are in the area this morning to work on repairs and ensure electricity is restored.”

Residents are urged to work with City Power and reduce the increasing demand for electricity during peak hours while they deal with capacity challenges.

“Over the past few days, we lost about three feeder cables, and only one was restored which is the one providing electricity currently. However, this cable is under huge distress due to overloading,” said Mangena.

Mangena advises that customers must assist by switching off non-essential appliances including geysers, stoves, pool pumps, and multiple heaters – especially during peak hours.

“Our Revenue Protection Unit will also be removing illegal connections which form part of the contributing factors to our challenges in the area.”

City Power apologises to the customers for the inconvenience caused.

“We appeal to customers to bear with us and have patience as we work hard to fix the problems. We are in contact with councillors and community leaders to work on permanent solutions for the area.”

The Executives at City Power are also planning to have a meeting with the community leaders soon to deal with the problems.

Mangena says the protests in the area may disrupt City Power’s efforts to reach some areas to do the repairs, and they appeal for cooperation and restraint.

“We won’t hesitate to pull our teams out of the area should we feel their lives and City Power property are threatened,” added Mangena.