Digging has residents at the end of their tether
Cable breaks leave home owners, businesses, frustrated and out of pocket. Sue Maclennan reports
Furious residents forked out thousands to replace rotten food and dead alarm and gate batteries after an electrical cable was broken last weekend, leaving some without power for as long as 31 hours. Makana Municipality and contractors for the internet fibre provider Frogfoot have both said they’re not to blame for the marathon outage that saw local security companies mount extra patrols, neighbours share their freezers and phonecharging points, and those who could afford it buy generators in sheer desperation.
In January Frogfoot contractors began digging cable trenches across the town. Makhanda was part of a major rollout across all the towns in the region, Frogfoot Regional Manager Marius Snyman explained at the time. The intention was to have a large part of the town live and ready for orders via individual service providers and the entire process completed by June 2021. A total of 317km of fibre is planned for Makhanda.
But residents have been left frustrated and out of pocket with a seemingly endless series of outages caused by cable breaks at or near the sites where trenching is being done for fibre.
Drury Lane resident Dane Brown has been affected by long outages twice.
“The first time was a while back when cables were first being laid. All my food went off because the power was out for 48 hours. My alarm and gate batteries had to be replaced,” said Brown.
Last weekend, he went out and bought ice and so didn’t lose much food.
“I charged the alarm and gate battery using my car battery to prevent it from deteriorating,” Brown said. “I ended up ordering a petrol generator from Takealot on the weekend.”
Altogether the two long outages cost him R700 for two batteries and around R1000 for meat, eggs, various veggies and a big pot of cooked food. The 1800w generator was R2200 on special on Takealot.
“My worry is, will my deep freeze and or the fridge break down?” said Fitzroy Street resident Luc Marechal, who was without power last weekend for 21 hours.
“If so, will my insurance pay for a new one? Also how does one cook, have hot water?”
Luckily Marechal’s only cost was R90 to refill a gas bottle for his gas light.
Another Fitzroy Street resident was without power last weekend for 31 hours. They lost around R800 in food from their fridge and freezer.
“We will perhaps discover other stuff in the fridge in due course that smells or tastes dodgy,” said the resident who asked to remain anonymous.
The worst, though, was that their security alarm was completely dead and with an upsurge in break-ins in the area, they felt unsafe.
“We have subsequently had a bigger alarm battery installed (bill to follow).”
Frustrated and furious, they went and bought a generator on Saturday morning.
“As with the Covid lockdown though, a plus is that community members helped each other,” the resident said.
Alette Schoon, also in Fitzroy Street, was without power for about 18 hours.
“The Frogfoot people were very quick to respond after I phoned them.
“They explained that the problem was
“They also said part of the delay was that once they had finished the repair, it often took the municipality several hours to switch the trip switch back on again.”
Another resident in the area said, “My Frogfoot fibre to the home was installed this morning, very efficiently, and is working great.”
Gmdirect has asked Makana Municipality to comment on the damage to the town’s road and electrical infrastructure that residents believe was incurred by the digging of trenches, as well as the expense to residents of prolonged outages.
We asked what Makana’s policy is with regard to the installation of universal infrastructure, such as fibre, by an outside contractor. We asked for a copy of the Council resolution that approves the installation and sets out the terms of the service provider’s wayleave approval.
Given that fibre is a universal resource (in much the same way that electrical and water and sanitation infrastructure are), we asked whether the municipality continues to receive a financial benefit for as long as that infrastructure is in place and in use. We asked whether there would be a second (and possibly third and fourth) round of
trench-digging for more companies to install underground fibre. And we asked what mechanisms Makana has in place to ensure that fibre infrastructure owners make repairs and reparations for damage done in the process of laying cables.
We asked the company currently digging trenches to lay cables, Frogfoot, to confirm that Makana signed wayleave permissions for the areas where the digging of fibre trenches is taking place.
We also asked them to confirm that Makana provided maps detailing where underground infrastructure (electrical cables, water pipes, sewage pipes) are, to enable the teams to avoid them.
And we asked them about their policies on repairs and reparations.
We hadn’t received a response from either Makana or Frogfoot by the time of publication. So we’ll add their responses to the website version of this article when we receive them, as well as include them in next week’s edition of Gmdirect.
Meanwhile, with only 3km left to go of its 21km route, Frogfoot rival Herotel has been interdicted by Ndlambe Municipality from continuing with its internet fibre project in Port Alfred. Talk of the Town reports that the temporary interdict was granted earlier this month pending a review application. Ndlambe claimed Herotel was given unlawful wayleave approval by an official who had no authority to do so.