There is no doubt that most, if not all residents, living in the Laudium/Erasmia area, have had enough of the continuous power failures experienced during the past few months.
This past week alone saw many residents left without electricity for most parts of the day and night, firstly due to power outages and
then due to loadshedding. The frustrating part is that residents cannot even plan their day properly, as they remain uncertain when next the power will go off. Each time there is a power outage, residents are given a number of excuses or reasons as to the cause of the power outages, such as cable theft, vandalism, or that council technicians are busy somewhere else and will attend to the problem ‘soon thereafter’. The hardship and inconvenience caused due to these ongoing outages is immense, not forgetting the harm caused to matriculants who are busy writing their final exams. From businesses to housewives, all have faced tremendous losses in both money and time.
The Laudium Sun, asked Shakeel Bhaktawer for a summary of the events that unfolded this week concerning the outages. Shakeel outlined the following, “Residents of Laudium had a frustrating weekend and beginning to the new week, with regard to major area outages. This time it was not loadshedding. The reality of our failing electrical infrastructure has revealed itself to our ward. We had a major outage on Friday evening. The residents were not sure if it was loadshedding, as social media went abuzz. We checked with the substation security who confirmed that no loadshedding officer was there. It was then reported as an area outage. Teams from the Council were dispatched and testing began. They immediately identified the problem to be one line going to Erasmia and the one line to Itireleng. The panels were isolated and electricity was restored at 4am the next morning. The identified Erasmia issue affected large parts of Erasmia and the neighboring plots. The testing team was dispatched on Saturday afternoon and identified the two mini substation underground cables as faulty. Teams were dispatched and we were present on both sites, together with some community members. The power was restored at 1:30am. On Sunday morning after 11am, we had another area outage. This again set social media abuzz, with angry residents openly venting their frustration. Rightfully, residents felt as if our area was a target for these outages. The teams were dispatched again and after testing again, another fault was found and the issue isolated. The rest of the ward received power with the exception of few areas. This was late afternoon. The fault area was isolated and repairs to that area were delayed because of the weather. This past Tuesday, we had the same rude awakening, when power in the area was out for the entire morning. Parts were restored after 4 hours and others remained off until late. The challenge is that council workers are not being approved for overtime payment and this also delayed the other areas from receiving power. The most disturbing fact that came to our attention is that the Claudius substation has 6 transformers. Of the 6, we only have one operational. That is disturbing because if that transformer blows and is damaged we will be without power for days. The city has been ignoring our continuous plea for repairs and upgrades to our infrastructure. This frustration has caused many residents to seek ways of holding the city responsible for the loss of business as well as perishables going off, such as certain food stuff. We have received many calls from frustrated residents and at times we were even blamed for the outages. Others used this to gain favour among critics, causing divisions at a time when we are supposed to be united and standing together, to overcome a community crisis.”
Amongst the many readers who complained to the Laudium Sun about the power outages was Raju Mohamed of Bay Leaf Restaurant
on Tangerine Street, who said, “Even though we have a back- up generator, our customers are not comfortable during these power
outages, as it causes a lot of noise, so basically customers don’t come in to eat during electricity outages.”
Amir Hossain who runs a takeaway business in the Laudium CBD, said, “First the problem was loadshedding, which was for a few hours a day, but now on top of loadshedding we have to face power outages, so basically most of the time we don’t have electricity. This is the story of Council each day. What is happening to South Africa? Everything is so corrupt. It is like driving a car and each day a few screws and nuts fall off, finally the entire car will just collapse or there will be no car anymore. I am very worried about the situation we are living in.”
