Residents of Roodepan in Kimberley fuming after a week without electricity

Residents of Roodepan in Kimberley are fuming due to a power outage in the area that has lasted for almost a week. Residents say the area has been turned into a hotspot for criminality with some are getting robbed due to the lack of electricity at night.

A desperate Roodepan family have pleaded with Kimberley’s Sol Plaatje Municipality to restore power in the area. The family, which is also affected by the outage, fears that their 75-year-old asthmatic relative, who survives on a nebulizer, might die due to lack of power.

Berenice Van Wyk, who is the daughter of the sick man, says, “They must switch on power immediately as soon as possible because you see how my father is lying. It’s not good for us, it feels like we are going to lose my father in the next few days because there is no power.”

Other residents say they are equally frustrated.

“It really affects us, our food is getting rotten, children have to go school and clothes need to be ironed. As you see streetlights are not working, it’s frustrating, we cannot cook. It’s frustrating because kids cannot go to school we cannot find candles at a shop, gas is high, no wood, so we are tired. I do not know, something must be done. Last night five guys got robbed, we couldn’t do anything. They had guns, there is nothing we cannot do about it,” says another member of the community.

Meanwhile, the Sol Plaatje Municipality says its technicians are working around the clock to restore power in the area after a contractor allegedly damaged electrical cables.

Municipality spokesperson Thoko Riet says, “An envy cable was damaged by contractors which is the cable feeding Roodepan which the reason why most parts of Roodepan were without power. But fortunately, most parts of Roodepan, power was restored. We have some parts which doesn’t have power currently but our electricians are doing what they can to restore power currently.”

Residents have urged the municipality to speedily restore power.

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