Irate residents of Macassar who have been on a roller-coaster ride with electricity issues in the area, were forced to endure yet another spell of outages this past weekend.
The incident occurred several weeks after residents were without electricity for hours on end on Sunday (23 October). The same residents, though, had to endure scheduled periods of load shedding along with the rest of the country (“Macassar without power, again”, District Mail & Helderberg Gazette, 26 October).
The lengthy power outage crisis has been ongoing in the area for the past three months, apparently as a result of a faulty cable near a construction site on Macassar Road.
Over this period, frustrated residents took to the streets in various protests on Sunday 9 and Monday 10 October, the latter one getting out of hand when angry residents started burning tyres and blocking access to the area after being without electricity for 12 hours or more (“Macassar residents angry”, 12 October).
Apparent blame shifting by the developer (Balwin Properties) and Eskom worsened matters, as residents demanded answers and a fix to the dire situation. The affected area was removed from Eskom’s load shedding schedule until Sunday 11 November, as a solution was sought (“Lights on for outage-weary locals”, 2 November).
In the most recent incident this past weekend, affected residents were forced to face about a-day-and-a-half of blackouts.
Macassar Village resident Taryn Carelse claimed the electricity supply was interupted around midday on Saturday (19 November) and only returned on Monday (21 November) at 09:00.
She said it was a “huge” struggle, as she had to take care of her family without electricity since Saturday.
Ward 109 councillor Peter Helfrich confirmed residents of Macassar Village were affected by the power outage.
“This outage was caused by another fault, and not the Eskom cable in Macassar Road [as was previously the case],” he said. “I have asked the City of Cape Town’s electricity department to investigate and determine what caused this power supply interruption and to provide me with formal feedback.”
Meanwhile, Helfrich is also awaiting confirmation from Eskom on the steps it will take to secure the problematic cable in Macassar Road in future, so that residents will not experience prolonged power outages again.
