The community of Ennerdale, south of Johannesburg, say they have become frustrated with the lack of service delivery in the area. They say each week they experience water supply outages and electricity cuts due to rampant cable theft.
Residents say the situation has reached critical levels, affecting even schools and other essential services.
Local community leader, Brenda Johnson says their cries for help to the local municipality have been ignored.
“Ennerdale has burning issues and I think it’s all about the unstable City of Johannesburg. The community is tired of complaining. The community has to log calls if you have a power outage or water crisis. This is an underprivileged community. Our people can’t suffer like this. We are buying water also. Then the schools have to close early, the children are walking all over. They are trapped with drugs and so on.”
Meanwhile, City Power says the issue of cable theft remains a challenge for them.
Spokesperson, Isaac Mangena says last year, the city recorded more than 2200 incidents of vandalism and theft of cables.
“City power has not been dealing with any cable-related outages in Ennerdale recently. The last incident was on July 8th, when cable theft affected extensions 10, 11, and 14. We recently had a cable theft incident from the lunar substation. The resultant outage took a few hours before power could be restored. However, this is not to say that the issue of cable theft is under control in the Lenasia supply area.”
