Eskom is under attack \u2013 by the City of Joburg and the regional ANC over the almost week-long spate of power outages in Soweto.<\/p>\n
The council has slammed the power utility for inefficiency and for failing to deliver on its mandate.<\/p>\n
The City of Joburg claimed areas supplied by its own utility, City Power, still had power, but those Eskom supplied did not.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is why new housing and business developments such as RDP houses, flats and hotels have power in the township, while the large part of Soweto supplied by Eskom has been cut off,\u201d said Matshidiso Mfikoe, the city\u2019s mayoral committee member for Environment and Infrastructure Services.<\/p>\n
She accused Eskom of being \u201cinsensitive\u201d and showing \u201ccomplete and utter disregard\u201d for the people of Soweto.<\/p>\n
But Eskom spokesman Khulu Phasiwe said there was \u201cnothing sinister\u201d about the power outages.<\/p>\n
He attributed the blackouts to load shedding and then, when the power was due to be switched on again, overloading that caused the transformer to trip.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have in some houses four or five backrooms using stoves at the same time, there is absolutely no way that the power will hold.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t control unplanned outages resulting from overloading,\u201d Phasiwe said.<\/p>\n
Eskom has been involved in a long-running battle with Soweto consumers over unpaid bills. Phasiwe said Soweto owed Eskom about R8 billion, of which R4bn was overdue.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome 84 percent of residents have not been paying their debt. Ideally, you should be having 16 percent not paying and 84 percent paying,\u201d Phasiwe pointed out.<\/p>\n
A key dispute \u2013 related to the outstanding billing problem \u2013 is the installation of prepaid electricity meters in Soweto. Both Eskom and City Power are installing meters for their customers. There have been ongoing protests across Soweto against their installation. Last week, Orlando West residents blockaded streets in protest against Eskom\u2019s prepaid meters.<\/p>\n
Mfikoe accused Eskom of changing the payment system unilaterally. She suggested it was inconceivable that the prolonged outages could occur without notice \u201cin the township internationally renowned as home to two Nobel peace laureates, Dr Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu\u201d.<\/p>\n
Source: IOL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eskom is under attack \u2013 by the City of Joburg and the regional ANC over the almost week-long spate of power outages in Soweto. The council has slammed the power utility for inefficiency and for failing to deliver on its mandate. The City of Joburg claimed areas supplied by its own utility, City Power, still … Continue reading “Sowetans attack Eskom for blackouts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[9564,4713,1603,456,11675,11676,560,11677,757],"class_list":["post-18906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-blackouts","tag-city-power","tag-debt","tag-eskom","tag-loadshedding","tag-meters","tag-nelson-mandela","tag-pre-paid-electricity","tag-soweto"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18907,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18906\/revisions\/18907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}