After a month of intermittent blackouts, City Power has upgraded to weekend-long power cuts.
- Braamfontein has been experiencing blackouts since Saturday morning.
- Residents and businesses bare the consequences of old infrastructure.
- City Power restored power on Monday afternoon.
On Saturday morning, Braamfontein residents woke up to another blackout, which led to a morning of cold-water baths, dead batteries, unironed clothes, cold meals and loud generators drowning each other out.
After a month of experiencing weekly unplanned blackouts for a couple of hours per incident, Braamfontein residents did not know that this one was different.
City Power said the outage occurred following a trip from Fordsburg Substation, which affected Braamfontein, Parktown and surrounding areas.
This trip led to three faults on a Braamfontein interconnector cable. As of this morning, two of the three faults have been located, but repairs were underway, said to City Power.
Some businesses have been closed since Saturday morning as they do not have backup power. Hairdressers are operating outside their salons for light.
“I have to do everything in the dark and spend extra money on data since the Wi-Fi is off. City Power needs to start paying us back for the electricity we pay for and don’t have,” said Tebogo Lebeya, resident of Braamfontein.
City Power said that due to existing network faults, customers cannot be backfed from alternative supply points.
They attributed these power faults to cable faults and damage caused by third parties. The disruptions are further linked to ageing infrastructure, illegal connections and sustained overloading of the network.
Sylvester Ayuk, owner of Estee Ay Communications, a printing business in Braamfontein, said: “Our clients are disappointed as we failed to meet deadlines over the past weekend. Our generator was only able to power one printing machine, we only managed to complete a few orders. We are calling upon the management to be quick to restore power next time.”
Amorette Anyang Onya, a nail technician, had to go to another town to charge her nail lamp, which she uses to dry nail polish.
“Having no electricity really slowed down my business. The time I used to go to another town to charge and come back, I could have used treating a customer or two,” she said.
The initial estimated restoration time was 18:00 on Saturday, February 21. The revised date of Monday, February 23 at 12 was unmet, and power was only restored at about 15:30 on the day.
FEATURED IMAGE: Generator powering a salon in Braamfontein due to power cuts. Photo: Lulah Mapiye
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