By Kopano Dibakwane
The office of the executive mayor at Emalahleni local municipality, Conny Nkalitshana, released an update on the electricity outages in some of the residential areas, such as Kwaguqa Extension and Vosman, subsequently leading to the on-going violent protests which have so far reportedly claimed the lives of two people, brought the N4 to a standstill for the whole week and also caused extensive damage to property.
According to the statement, power outages came as a result of internal damages experienced by the main transformer, which was later removed from site and transported to the manufacturer for repairs.
” The contingency plans have been activated in that funds from our own revenue have been secured subject to condonement by council for the replacement transformer to be delivered today (12 May). The installation work is expected to commence by Saturday (13 May) and of course it will take few days for the work to be completed, including testing of the transformer,”
Nkalitshana apologised for the unforeseen power outages, calling for calm while encouraging the community to protect the delivery of the transformer and technical teams, so that power can be restored in the shortest possible time.
She said that the message of her key address to the community, to give an update on the contingency measures to resolve the current challenges, was overshadowed by inaccurate information on social media platforms, alleging that she was attacked for being disrespectful after she was reportedly quoted as saying; ” why do you need electricity because you don’t even have refrigerators”. Nkalitshana refuted the allegations.
” I did not and will never utter such words to the community and to anyone for that matter,” she said.
According to Nkalitshana, the community was enraged and threw stones, after a lady whose child had died during the protest took the loud hailer and complained about the lack of attention given to her family situation.
Nkalitshana committed to give regular updates to the community and stakeholders on progress made in restoring power back to the affected areas.
