A power outage over the weekend in Macassar resulted in a total blackout in the community for more than 48 hours, with infuriated residents demanding answers from Eskom. However, there’s no official report yet as to what caused the outage.
The power initially went out on Friday evening (26 August) and although some areas in Macassar were switched on at intermittent periods, most areas remained off and some homes had still reported no power on Tuesday morning (30 August).
According to a statement by Ward 109 Councillor Peter Helfrich, he’d been engaging Eskom since early Saturday morning, and according to them cables were damaged next to the Huntsman apartments in Macassar Road and also on the corner of Nagtegaal Street and Tortelduif Street.
What followed was reportedly fault after fault that affected hundreds of households with power restoration delayed. By Monday most areas had power supply restored.
According to Eskom spokesperson Kyle Cookson the outage was due to cable fault caused by water ingress. “Eskom wishes to apologise to its customers for the inconvenience,” he said.
“What transpired in our ward over this weekend was unacceptable. It not only caused great inconvenience for thousands of residents, it also came at a great cost to many,” Helfrich stated.
“While no report has been handed to me about what caused the power outage yet, it seems that this may have been caused as a result of the work that a private contractor is doing on Macassar Road. I have reported this matter to Eskom who, from what I understand, have issued the private contractor with a notice and have asked them to seize the work they are doing on the side of the road where the Eskom cable is.”
Helfrich added that he’s asked for an urgent meeting with the private contractor, their engineers and Eskom, before they continue with the work on Macassar Road, to express the disappointment and frustration. This meeting will take place today (Wednesday 31 August). “At this meeting, I will be requesting a full report on what exactly caused the power outage and what they will be doing to prevent this from happening in the future,” Helfrich said.
