The City of Cape Town met with Eskom over the prolonged outage in the broader Elsies River area that left residents without power for more than 80 hours.
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Beverley van Reenen, the City’s Mayco member for energy, has called for calm amid violent protest action by members of the Elsies River community due to the outage.
‘The City asks residents to please refrain from threats and intimidation against City office bearers, City staff and also Eskom teams trying to resolve the massive outage, thought to be largely caused by vandalism and theft of Eskom infrastructure. Any interference to the restoration efforts will cause delays.’
According to Eskom, the power was restored to about 60% by yesterday. ‘The City will continue to monitor Eskom’s progress as we understand the severe inconvenience to affected residents,’ says Van Reenen.
‘While the City values service delivery to residents, there are limits to what the City or its representatives can achieve, as Eskom is a national entity and does not fall within the control of the City,’ she adds.
‘Some areas in the City of Cape Town are supplied with electricity directly by Eskom and others by the City. This is not something which is determined by the City but under national legislation.
‘The supply areas are established under the National Electricity Regulation Act via the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s (Nersa) issued distribution licenses. The Eskom distribution licence defines the Eskom supply area within the City of Cape Town and the City’s distribution licence defines the City’s supply area.’
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According to Eyewitness News, the blackout was related to ‘unplanned faults’.
Pranesha Govender, a Cravenby resident, says the power came on around 1:45am on Tuesday morning but went off again at noon. ‘At this moment in time, Eskom is busy with their rotations for 12 hours between us and other areas that fall in District 13, but our experience with Eskom has been atrocious.’
Govender told EWN that the issue lies at the Belhar substation. ‘This substation has not been kept, has not been maintained properly by Eskom, and this is now the fourth time that it has given up and has left us in the dark for more than 80 hours, which is the longest that we’ve been without power.’
Eskom reportedly indicated that the power would be restored by Wednesday. However, several residents have voiced their frustrations on social media, stating that their power is still interrupted and inconsistent.
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