Incessant power outages plague Lakefield community

by Cllr Mary Goby — DA Ward Councillor in Ekurhuleni

Date: 25 June 2021

Release: Immediate

Type: Media Statement

After 20 years of mismanagement under the ANC, the electrical infrastructure across the City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) is near a state of collapse. This week alone, large parts of Benoni had no electricity for days on end, with scant information provided by the Metro to residents or businesses.

On the evening of the 13th of June, the power went off for several hours for nearly the whole of Benoni. The issue was reported to the CoE Contact Centre under the following reference numbers; 4801894, 4801887, and 4801914. As the DA, we contacted the HOD of Energy, Mr. Mark Wilson, for feedback and he denied the outages, saying “I happen to live in Benoni, and I know a lot of people in Benoni. There was no widespread outage in Benoni last night”.

On the 21st of June, the power went off again at around 23h00 at night, and the power was only restored the next day at around 11h00. During this time, the ANC-led coalition CoE did not acknowledge the outages or provide any source of information to residents and councillors.

DA Councillors have been inundated with calls and messages from desperate and disgruntled community members, and CoE officials are not forthcoming with any information, further aggravating the issue. The DA shares the anger and frustration of the residents of Ekurhuleni as they must endure recurring power outages without any meaningful communication from the Metro. Furthermore, power outages take prolonged periods of time to get resolved.

The dismal failure to deliver basic services highlights the incompetence of the ANC and its coalition partners, and the DA will continue to force the uncaring ANC-government to act in the interest of Ekurhuleni residents.

#Time4Change

*ANC Coalition Partners: African Independent Congress (AIC), Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Patriotic Alliance (PA) and Independent Ratepayers Association of South Africa (IRASA)

Cllr Mary Goby

DA Ward Councillor in Ekurhuleni