Our electricity tripped when power was restored on September 14 evening and I reported it.
I reported it again the following day and followed up with the Ekurhuleni call centre. I was told to be patient. I also advised our DA ward councillor, Ivan Naidoo, on the Telegram group.
A ward committee member advised that it has been escalated. When I asked for feedback, I was advised, in the same group by a ward committee member that because this is not affecting a large group Energy will not provide feedback.
This is not good enough.
Our power was restored for three hours before Friday’s load-shedding and then tripped again when the power was switched back on after load-shedding. I reported it, advised again on the Telegram group and was told it had been escalated, whatever that may mean. A large area of Alberton North and Florentia also experienced downtime on Saturday.
After further messages on the Telegram group and more calls to the Ekurhuleni call centre on Sunday, a group of technicians was sent to check the boundary box and mini-sub.
They advised that there was a cable fault, and then lay down on the lawn. Once they had a replacement cable, the technicians jumped in their bakkies and left, after telling my husband that they were waiting for overtime payments and would not work further.
I shared the developments on the same Telegram group and my husband called the call centre. The technicians were called back.
My husband is an electrician and stood with them while they installed the cable. When they started to close up the box, they mumbled to each other about this being a big problem, but wouldn’t explain further to my husband when he asked what was happening. They then jumped into their bakkies and left again.
My husband ran after them, shouting that we still did not have power (I had phoned him from home).
My husband left work this morning and went home to check if the power has come on, as well as show his electrician colleague how the voltage drops when circuit breakers are put on. He saw someone from Ekurhuleni and showed him how the incoming voltage was 220 until we switched on one light circuit breaker.
The power then dips completely and nothing else (fridges, other lights) will run, because there is no power to run them. He then had to return to work, so we do not know if anything further has happened.
I am shocked at what has happened over the last few days. It seems because this is not a large area outage, our issue has been downplayed and disregarded. I sent a message on the Telegram group stating that we were now heading for 100 hours without power and sent another mentioning the lack of response, three hours later.
There is no follow-up with the technicians who are sent to resolve the issue and no communication with us advising us of what is happening. We are left, literally, in the dark.
We have spent R1 300 on our generator’s petrol thus far to have some light and to charge phones. I have thrown away the food in my fridge because our generator is not strong enough to power the fridges. We take cold baths, we have not cooked a meal since Wednesday night and have been eating takeaways every evening.
We are unable to do our washing.I do hope we can find someone who cares enough to push the repairs so that we can have electricity again. I do hope those in power realise the magnitude of the issues we are facing in Alberton.
Lee-Ann Duvenage
Local councillor’s feedback
“The incident of the power outage was brought to my attention on Saturday morning by Naidoo who lives at 43 Andries Pretorius. I sent it to the department. However, there were several outages on the day, including the outage on 1st Avenue, where a person was electrocuted trying to steal a cable. “There were multiple streets off due to this cable damage,” explained Ward 37 Clr Ivan Naidoo.
He said the department went out on Sunday and tried to repair it, however, the first team left.
“I am not sure why, but residents said because the overtime was not authorised. I called the depot manager who sent out a contractor to sort it out. All power was restored by the evening; however, 41 and 43 were still not done due to multiple cable faults. They were left for Monday,” Naidoo said.
He said the team went out on Monday and that all power was restored to the two homes affected.
“Service delivery is a major challenge in the city and as councillors, we are fighting for our residents to have incidents resolved soonest,” he said.
He said councillors rely on the various departments to provide the service.
