Electricity woes leave Dobsonville residents in the dark

Frustrated residents of Dobsonville Extension 1, 2,3,4,5, and 7 were left in the dark for over four days, in what they said has become a daily occurrence for them.

The area has been battling unscheduled outages and prolonged load shedding which has plunged the area in complete darkness in recent weeks.

In a heated community meeting on Sunday with the counsellor as Eskom technicians continued working at the Dobsonville sub station, the disgruntled residents said they were fed up with the ongoing electricity challenges in the area and laid the blame on Eskom and the ward councillor, Salamina Mpotulo for failing them as this is not a new issue.

They said they were not satisfied with lack of urgency, communication and resolution in addressing the long standing issue and were fed up with listening to the same excuses from Mpotulo who never has the answers to their concerns.

ALSO READ: City Power technicians attacked and hijacked in Lenasia South

Rachel Mangope, whose child was born with a chronic lung disease, told the publication that she feared the worst as the prolonged outages posed a threat on her child’s life. She said she feared what would happen if the oxygen tank ran out.

“My situation is bad and I already fear for the worst. My four month old baby has been dependent on oxygen since she was born. I was given an oxygen cylinder and another one that uses electricity.

I alternate between the two when there’s load shedding and when electricity returns,” Mangope said.

“Since we had no power, the oxygen levels on the cylinder are running low. I am frustrated because what if something happens to my child because I am more reliant on the electricity one.

“If anything happens to my child, I will sue Eskom and Salamina because no one seems to know what the real issue here is.

“Instead she says they are waiting on senior technicians and I asked the cllr until when will we suffer because the cylinder is now on red. It’s literally empty.”

Miranda Mpungose told Urban News that the issue began last year and has progressively worsened and there was still no clear solution.

“In the last two weeks, we have been experiencing the normal schedule load shedding of two hours but when it has to come back, it will for a few minutes and goes off again for an additional two hours or worse doesn’t come back at all like now.

“Every month we go through this issue. If you are in Ext 4, you can’t buy meat or budget because you are forever out of electricity. I’m not coping; I work from home.

“You have to have money every week to refill the gas tank. This has been happening for too long, how does Eskom not have technicians that can bring a permanent solution to the issue?” she questioned.

According to some residents they said they believed that there is a problem with the nearby Joshco flats, which they claim were connected to their grid, and therefore was causing the system to overload due to the demand, causing the electricity to trip.

Many residents questioned how this happened as the capacity of the grid was meant for Dobsonville houses.

A resident who asked to be kept anonymous said, “We don’t know for sure but we learnt that the flats are at the centre of the electricity problems in Dobsonville. It started from their flats which we believe were joined to our watts and we question how this came about because we suspect shortcuts were taken. Everyone is aware of the issue, it was even discussed in one of the meetings that the flats are the problem,” they told the publication.

Urban News is awaiting comment from Eskom.