Africa-Press – South-Africa. The City of Johannesburg has urged residents to be patient as it struggles to restore the widespread power outages in the metro.
Acting MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services Leah Knott said after conducting an oversight visit of key City Power installations on Thursday it had become clear that Johannesburg was facing an “unprecedented outages crisis”.
“The recent extreme wet weather, return of rolling blackouts, breakdown in supply chains and runaway cable theft have hampered efforts by City Power to turn the lights back on. However, the challenges we are facing are substantial, and all technicians and personnel are working around the clock and risking their lives to rescue the situation,” said Knott.
Close to 2 000 outages were experienced across the city last weekend as a surge in demand put significant strain on the city’s aged electricity infrastructure network.
City Power has deployed as many technicians and contractors as possible to restore electricity to the affected areas, but a breakdown in supply chain management has prevented many issues from being resolved as critical parts have not arrived at depots.
Knott said:
Rampant cable theft has further complicated the situation as City Power personnel are under sustained attack from criminals pilfering Johannesburg’s electrical infrastructure on a daily basis.
“Three employees have since lost their lives in the last week at the hands of cable thieves,” said Knott.
“There is nothing more frustrating than trying to live your life at home and at work without power. But we cannot change the simple fact that Joburg’s aging power infrastructure is not able to be fixed and perform seamlessly overnight,” Knott added.
According to Knott, City Power technicians are literally working around the clock and risking their lives in the process of restoring the power supply.
She said residents with power had a critical role to play by switching off all geysers and pool pumps and using all appliances sparingly.
“City Power needs as much contingency power capacity as possible to deal with the outages backlog and return power to residents currently in the dark,” said Knott.
The City’s Department of Environment and Infrastructure Services said it would continue to monitor City Power’s restoration programme. It said it would also constantly communicate with the teams on the ground doing the work and keep the public informed as the situation progressed.
The department added that it would meet with officials from the Department of Public Safety to co-ordinate efforts to address the widespread theft of Johannesburg’s electrical infrastructure.
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