Eskom clarifies on-going electricity woes in Dobsonville

Power utility, Eskom has refuted claims that the recent on-going electricity crisis in the Dobsonville area is due to the Joshco Flats as some residents alleged.

It said the Joshco Flats do not contribute to the outages experienced in Dobsonville as the transformer that supplies this area has the capacity for all customers connected to it and this includes the flats.

This follows frequent blackouts in a number of Dobsonville extensions in recent weeks with the most recent interruption that left the Dosbonville area without power for days.

Some of the residents alleged that the flats were contributing to the electricity tripping as it was connected to their watts.

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The utility says the challenge with Dobsonville electricity was due to network overloading. It cited that Dobsonville has a high number of zero buyers which are customers that are either purchasing electricity from ghost vendors, as well as those not paying for the electricity as part of the main causes of frequent outages.

“Eskom is aware of the frequent unplanned supply interruptions Dobsonville is experiencing. It is as a result of illegal connections, meter bypasses and tampering, unauthorised operations on the electricity network and theft of electricity infrastructure such as cables and vandalism of the electricity infrastructure which are rife in the area,” Eskom explained, following an enquiry by Urban News.

“The area where most of the theft is happening and the cables are stolen is a wetland which makes it a challenge to access when we need to repair or replace and subsequently restore the supply,” it said.

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According to Eskom, it has put certain measures in place to prevent these outages in Dobsonville. These include risk assessments conducted to classify and identify hot spot areas.

“Static guards are placed strategically at hotspots sites and are complimented by armed response patrols. Armed response patrols are conducted at interval periods at the identified routes,” Eskom explained.

“We partner and collaborate with community members, community security companies, business forums, community policing forums (CPF), SAPS and POPS to try and reduce theft and vandalism of the electricity infrastructure.

“We constantly investigate alternative measures that will assist us to prevent the theft and vandalism of our equipment,” said the power utility, adding that they conduct network audits, remove illegal connections and disconnect customers found to have bypassed or tampered with their meters as these acts overload the network and result in outages.