Photo by Gerhard Roux (CC-BY-SA).
30 April 2014
Residents of Crossroads and Nyanga have slammed Eskom for not giving them any notice of power cuts which lasted several hours yesterday. But Eskom says the cuts were unplanned and residents could not be notified in advance.
Asanda Mathanzima said her salon had to be closed for the day because there was no electricity and she lost money.
“I just do not understand when Eskom just decides to cut our power as if we do not use it. Some of us have businesses and we rely on the money we make daily to make a living for ourselves. Today I could have made a profit of more than R500. We need to be respected because we pay for the electricity,” she said.
A teacher at a nearby school said that he had read in the newspaper than Eskom was getting R5 million for office renovation while township residents suffered. “I really do not understand these rich companies. They think we are stupid. A few months back we had to understand that Eskom was experiencing problems, and without being given any choice we had to sacrifice and accept load shedding. And a few months later they have millions just to fix offices.”
“Look at us now; we do not have food because we did not cook. And some of the children can’t do their school work because there is no electricity. And yet we are expected to pay high rates for it,” said the teacher, who did not want to give his name.
Nyanga is a high crime area and residents complain that criminals benefit from power cuts when the street lights go out.
Nokwanda Grootboom said that it was rude of Eskom to just turn the power off without informing people. “Even if something went wrong with maintenance, they had enough hours to inform the community. We just had to sit in our houses for hours wondering if the lights would come on or not.”
“If there is something wrong with their machines why can’t they use the money we pay for electricity to fix them. I had a date today and needed to fix my hair, and I had to cancel it because I couldn’t go with such bad hair”, said Grootboom.
Eskom confirmed today that the electricity supply to parts of Nyanga and Crossroads had been interrupted yesterday due to a cable fault.
“This was not a planned outage and therefore customers could not be notified of the interruption. The fault is currently being investigated.”
Asked about the money to be spent on head office refurbishment, Eskom said: “Eskom’s head office is 35 years old, is in a bad state of disrepair, and needs to be refurbished. The building does not comply with minimum regulations and standards on health and safety. Furthermore it is not energy efficient. The aim is to make the building fit for another 30 years of use.”