2009/07/01
RESIDENTS of Mthatha stormed the King Sabata Dalindyebo municipal offices yesterday morning to demand immediate electricity reconnections following a week long outage at Mandela, Chris Hani and Slovo parks.
The 14 angry protesters, who said they were representing the community, claimed their areas had not had electricity since June 21. “We have called the municipality’s call centre to report the outage without any joy for the whole of last week,” said community leader Simosakhe Memani.
“People at the call centre kept on telling us that the electricity would be back before the end of each day we called .”
Memani and the other residents staged a sit-in at the municipality from about 8am, demanding to meet the municipality’s acting manager of infrastructure Zukani Maxwele. They met him at about noon .
Memani said what also infuriated residents was that neighbouring areas such as the old South African Embassy complex and Caravan Park never experienced the outages. And another leader added: “If this electricity is not restored before the end of today we will organise community members to march in bigger numbers to stage a sit- in here.”
Maxwele, who said he understood the electricity problem started after strong winds on Wednesday and Thursday, told the residents electricity would be restored today.
Municipal spokesperson Sonwabo Mampoza said the municipality could not attend to the problem as its two “cherrypicker” trucks (a truck with an extendable work platform) had broken down.
“Our electricians will collect a cherrypicker truck now from our workshop and go to fix the problem. We have also identified that there was a faulty cable and we have already bought a new one to replace it.
“Those at the call centre who have been giving false promises to the clients will have to be disciplined,” said Mampoza.
However, when the Daily Dispatch spoke to a technician working at Chris Hani Park, he said there had not been any attempt to restore electricity since the outage because there were no vehicles to do so. The cherrypicker truck was due for a service on May 31, “and we don’t want to use it because it is dangerous. We were promised two new trucks but it didn’t happen.”
Businesses have suffered and meat in residents’ freezers had gone rotten. But Mampoza said the municipality had no plans to compensate residents. The municipality had also suffered financially, he added. - By BONGANI HANS, Mthatha Bureau
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