Komani residents have come out guns blazing against Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality (EMLM) for failure to provide the basic service of consistent and stable electricity supply.
This after the small town of Sterkstroom was out of electricity for 14 days and the suburb of Top Town is on its seventh day of blackout.
A few days ago EMLM said the operation to restore electricity in Top Town would be completed on the same day. In the same statement, however, it said: “It is unfortunate that efforts to energise Top Town were unsuccessful due to a rotten cable. We assure affected residents that this outage is receiving all the required attention, as the contractor and our technical team have been working on site throughout,” it said.
On Sunday, April 10 the municipality released another statement on its Facebook page saying there was work being done to resuscitate two of its alternative lines. “We are monitoring the system and all areas will be reconnected when the load normalises. Our contractor experienced technical challenges while working on the alternative lines,” the municipality said.
Residents weighed in lambasting the local authority for the lack of service delivery.
Resident Eva Goosen said: “EMLM are to blame for lack of maintenance. What does our mayor (Thembeka Bunu) have to say about this disgraceful situation?”
Other residents called for the local authority to hand the provision of electricity back to Eskom. The municipality currently owes Eskom R710 million with a monthly interest of between R100 million and R200 million.
“You tell us this stupid thing, you should have prioritized to buy new Ebden Street substation than useless projects of yours. Queenstown is the source of revenue for your Municipality,” resident Nelisa Pambo said.
Another resident, Malerato Molokoane said it was time Bunu and her mayoral committee went to meet the residents to apologise and give an explanation on the electricity outages. She said appliances were damaged with the on and off electricity supply in some parts of the EMLM area.
“Think of people with babies, people who live on Insulin, those who survive on oxygen, think about the groceries that must be thrown away. No one has a miscellaneous budget to buy fast food for six days, those with generators have surely run out of money to buy petrol. I’m humbling myself comrades, just remember the eight principles of Batho Pele, it’s inhumane to once in a while update your Facebook page and think people know what is happening, what about those who don’t have Facebook or whose batteries died long ago?,” Molokoane asked.
An appeal from Komani-Karoo Express for a statement from the municipality on the status quo was met with silence.
The latest update from the Municipality was posted earlier today:
