Power cuts for some Soweto residents
Illegal connections in Soweto are a huge challenge for Eskom.
It could be a cold winter for some residents in Soweto especially after the Stats SA has reported that, “the percentage of households that use electricity for cooking increased from 58% in 2002 to 78.1% in 2015.”
According to Reuters, On March 18 Jacob Zuma said, “South Africa will no longer have load-shedding as the utility Eskom has beefed up electricity generation capacity to meet demand. I have been assured by Eskom’s CEO and the entire management that there will never be load-shedding again.”
Load shedding is the deliberate shutdown of electric power in a part or parts of a power-distribution system, generally to prevent the failure of the entire system when the demand strains the capacity of the system.
Fin24 has reported that The Department of Public Enterprise accounted to the parliament that, “the MP of DA asked if there were any plans to waive debts owed by residents to Eskom for services rendered?”
In response to this question the Department of Public Enterprise said, “Eskom has been in an attempt to put aside Soweto residents’ debts repayment as an incentive to convert to prepaid meters and customers converted to prepaid meters are monitored over 3 years to establish if the behaviour of buying electricity becomes entrenched.
Writing off the historical debts is considered if good behaviour is shown by customer during the monitoring period; each customer is dealt with on an individual basis.”
Residents from various parts of Soweto like Jabavu and Rockville agree that there has not been any load shedding this winter, however they have been experiencing power cuts.
The spokesperson of Eskom, Khulu Phasiwe says that, “These power cuts are caused by illegal connections of electricity, which are a huge challenge for Eskom. An illegal connection overloads the power system, this overload then trips the main switch to save the system from exploding. We try our best to arrive within an hour whenever the public reports a power trip, depending on the availability of our agents on the field.” Khulu continued to say that Eskom relies on the communities to report illegal connections.”
Residents are urged to call 011 375 5555 in the event of a power trip or to report illegal connections.
