Lungile Ntimba
Eskom has announced the immediate disconnecting of illegal electricity connections in the Diepsloot community as part of its province-wide campaign to reduce unnecessary burdens on the supply network.
Spokesperson for Eskom Gauteng Amanda Qithi said the township’s illegal connections have significantly strained the power grid, causing frequent outages and extensive damage to infrastructure.
However Diepsloot residents said they are frustrated at the lack of delivery of basic services from the government and that Eskom is responding to legitimate problems with power failures and other challenges regarding the provision of electricity by cutting off supply.
Diepsloot resident Abraham Mabuke, said the illegal transformers in the area are brought in as a result of Eskom’s delay to respond to the needs for electricity in the community.
Mabuke said the residents also blame Eskom for delaying the process of replacing transformers which are faulty.
“We follow all the procedures, we log calls to Eskom and they tell us about the audit they need to conduct which takes weeks,” Mabuke said.
Last month, several welfare organisations in the area confirmed that they have been without electricity for over a year.
The organisations said it remained difficult for sponsors to assist them with food as they do not have adequate refrigeration or other facilities to store them.
“It’s difficult for these organisations to function daily without electricity, especially organisations such as the Family Africa. Family Africa is an organisation that assists with nutrition for people living with HIV and these people depend on the food they get from sponsors,” councillor Matlale Mphahlele said.
However, Eskom has lashed back and blamed illicit connections for causing the transformers to break down and said the delayed response was as a result of safety concerns for technicians because Diepsloot is too dangerous.
Illegal power connections result in the infrastructure capacity being overloaded, reducing its performance, and ultimately impacting on paying customers, said energy and infrastructure expert Ruse Moleshe.
Moleshe said these illegal connections add to the demand culminating in power failure, and subsequently requiring energy infrastructure to be upgraded in order to allow everyone to connect.
He also pointed out various challenges that lead to these illegal connections.
“Some of these challenges are affordability, people struggle to pay electricity bills and when they are switched off, they jump to illegal power connections,” she said.
In addition, some of the illegal users have no intention to pay at all, further straining the infrastructure, she said.
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