Some Johannesburg residents say they are struggling to cope without electricity for at least four days.
A number of areas in the city which include Randburg, Fairlands, Roodepoort, Lenasia, Reefhaven and Hursthill have been hit by prolonged power outages.
The City has asked Eskom to consider exempting Joburg from loadshedding for a few days to allow City Power to catch up on fixing the outages.
The outages are partly the result of heavy thunderstorms and flooding.
Technicians say they have their hands full: “We are not out of the woods yet, we still have a high number of calls from around the city. We are hovering around 4000 outage calls, even from this morning with half from the last 24 hours. Damage to local infrastructure has been huge. We have still transformers and substations that are still under water. Especially in Lenasia, we have damaged poles and cables exposed during the floods.”
Meanwhile, Johannesburg’s City Power says they have been inundated with reports of outages from across the city as a result of the flooding, which is compounded by the higher stages of loadshedding.
The city has requested a 72-hour reprieve from loadshedding by Eskom to work on network faults.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena says they have beefed up the teams in the pressure areas: “More rains are predicted for the coming days, It will really get worse before it gets better. We are not operating under normal circumstances currently and we have recalled all our teams to return to duty. We are also increasing resources in hotspot areas to ensure that we are able to address the backlog. We have also brought on board the street light teams so that they can assist in terms of maintenance. Our problems are compounded by loadshedding which is having a devastating impact on our resources.”
