Eskom is working tirelessly to restore supply to customers in Central Western Jabavu (CWJ), Jabavu, Mofolo Central, Molapo and White City, Soweto.
It may take even more days to have supply restored in these areas as the power utility explores other safe methods to supply customers following the outage at the Jabavu substation which was vandalised beyond repair.
“Our teams have been working around the clock since Friday 30 April 2021 when power to the affected areas was interrupted and they have managed to restore supply to customers in Molapo, parts of Moroka, Klipspruit and Pimville.
“The rain interfered with work on site causing further delays. This is one of the biggest incidents of vandalism that we have ever encountered. The damage to the cables and panels at the substation is extensive and requires replacement.
“As we work on replacing the damaged infrastructure, we will use other methods to supply electricity to our customers, but it may take days before we manage to do that”, says Daphne Mokwena, Senior Customer Service Manager in the Gauteng Operating Unit.
Eskom reports that illegal electricity operators are aggravating the situation as they cause more damage to the electricity infrastructure and also expose its employees and members of the public to danger.
The power utility consistently appeals to members of the public to use electricity responsibly and to refrain from creating illegal connections and operating on the Eskom network, bypassing meters, tampering with, and vandalising the electricity infrastructure in order to avoid supply interruptions.
We also encourage the public to pay for the electricity they consume and purchase their electricity tokens from approved Eskom vendors only.
“We would like to urge our customers to be patient as we work on providing a lasting solution to the problem and to partner with us as we root out criminal elements who are illegally connecting to our infrastructure causing network overloads which lead to prolonged outages due to damage on these networks”, concluded Mokwena.
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