-
An area in darkness
Enraged elderly residents of Dobsonville, wards 47 and 48 in Soweto, Johannesburg, are frustrated as they are set to have a power-less Christmas. Despite numerous meetings with Eskom officials in Diepkloof, the community remains without power.
In a show of protest, residents picketed outside Eskom’s Megawatt Park in Sandton, demanding restoration of electricity to their homes. The community has been struggling without power for seven months, affecting nearly 100 households.
Elders walking on crutches, using oxygen tanks lament their financial burden. Forced to spend more on food and endure cold baths due to the power cuts, their patience has worn thin and they are demanding a solution from Eskom.
“We’ve got people who are sick and those who are asthmatic like the one that you see and it’s a problem, we also spend a lot of money buying gas and buying food because it’s every day and it means that every day, we have to go get something to eat. The fridges are off and we are struggling a lot especially those that are getting a grant because it’s R2 000 and what can you do with that and when the week is over, we are left with nothing,” an elder says.
“We are struggling and now we have to spend more money buying food and we are receiving grant and that money is not enough. Eskom is not putting back the electricity and we live with our children,” another elder says.
“I am very angry; we have a lot of elders here and they do not want us to enter the building. We are here to talk to them to put back on our lights. They have fixed certain sections and our section has not been fixed. We have people that live on medication, their medication can’t even be put in the fridge. Some people live on oxygen tanks. Gas is expensive and we can’t buy it. We are asking for your help,” another elder explains.
Video: Energy Crisis – Dobsonville residents picket outside Eskom offices over prolonged outage
A community leader says, several meetings have been held with Eskom officials. However, no progress has been made in attempting to restore power. He says that the community will have a black Christmas this year.
“When we went to meet with them in the meeting, they told us the three transformers are spot at solar Eskom, so we are going to be giving best preference. But when those transformers were installed, the two areas in Dobsonville, they erected those new transformers. But when we went back to them and say, we can see that people are busy, and they will have electricity, anytime from now they said, no, you are going to be connected, but they do not give us a timeline. When are you going to be connected, we don’t know,” says Stephans Mogoai, Dobsonville Community leader.
Eskom in Gauteng says there has been a high number of failed transformers around the province.
“Over the past months, as communique has recorded a very high number of failed transformers and many subs due to network overloading. The network overloading is caused by illegal connections, meter bypassing and tampering; unauthorized operations on our network infrastructure, vandalism and theft, and these are constantly on the rise. The mini sub in Dobsonville also failed because of illegal connections and customers illegally operating on our network. We have to date successfully replaced and repaired more than 500 damaged mini sub stations and transformers because of overloading in Dobsonville alone,” says Amanda Qithi, Gauteng Eskom Spokesperson.
Despite the numerous meetings with Eskom officials, residents of Dobsonville are likely to experience a Christmas without electricity this year.
