HIGH COST OF POWER OUTAGES
THE DA has indicated that residents of the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality (EMLM) should expect more power and water outages – and that the state of affairs should be blamed on the ANC.
In a statement, DA caucus leader Chris de Wet said residents had a “rude awakening” last Wednesday when most of the town was left without water and power.
“Although the initial trigger that led to the damage at the transformer on the western station is believed to have been caused by a lightning strike, the rest of the damage to the network was totally preventable if proper maintenance and the upgrade of the network was maintained.”
He said that as a result of the lack of maintenance and upgrading, an incident which should have taken a few hours to repair, took a few days.
The power blackout led to the water supply also being interrupted and once the electricity supply was restored, the main water supply pipeline burst and resulted in a further delay in restoring the water supply.
In some instances some areas were without water for over five days.
“What happened over the last few days has been extremely traumatic for the residents of Komani. It has caused immense personal discomfort, more so to the vulnerable and the poor. It had a huge impact on the vulnerable members of our society, such as old people, sick people and the needy.
“Apart from the aforesaid, schools and their activities were interrupted and businesses had to shut down.”
De Wet said it was expected that the impact of the disaster would run into millions while impacting negatively on investors’ confidence in Komani where job creation was desperately needed.
De Wet commended the staff of EMLM and the Chris Hani District Municipality who worked through the night to effect emergency repairs.
“They were the real heroes and deserve our thanks and respect for what they have done. Furthermore, from civil society there was an amazing surge of cooperation where individuals, as well as organisations, played an amazing role to render assistance and supply information to our communities.
“These people are also heroes and proved that we have awesome people in our town who excelled when the need was there.”
Unfortunately, he added, the same could not be said of most of the high-ranking political officials who “were glaring in their absence during the crises”.
“One would have expected that the respective mayors and their mayoral committees would have played an active leadership role on the ground to restore basic services to our people. Instead they comfortably remained in their plush houses, paid for by taxpayers’ money.”
De Wet said the party had warned against the scenario of the past few days, with Komani having reached the stage where massive breakdowns of water and electricity supplies could become a regular occurrence.
“Sadly, due to gross mismanagement of municipal finances, the municipality is now bankrupt and had to arrange for a R40-million overdraft to pay salaries and the Eskom bill. This does not leave any room for substantial funds being available to repair and upgrade crumbling infrastructure.”
He said the blame should go to the ANC that had “over the last 20-odd years governed our town and municipality into the ground. They should be held accountable for this unfolding tragedy.”