KZN businesses, homes struggling to cope amid worsening power crisis
Electricity
has returned to homes and businesses in Montclair, south of Durban, where
residents have had no power since Sunday.
eThekwini Ward 64 councillor Gavin Hegter has highlighted aged electricity infrastructure as the reason for the extended blackouts.
He says the city's infrastructure cannot handle repetitive load shedding.
"A lot of the infrastructure hasn't been serviced for 30-odd years, it's now starting to break down. So the current fault we are experiencing is the main feeder cable to the Montclair/Woodlands area on Sunday night.
"That cable popped so the teams went out, found the fault and then repaired it. And as they energised the line, it popped again in another place on the cable.
“Engineers worked tirelessly to repair the cable faults.”
Resident Julie Meyer says some residents were lucky enough to have been able to make alternative arrangements.
"You can hear the generator running in the back, we were blessed enough to have my dad get one from work but it's costly to run it, we basically only runnig it to keep our freezer on."
Fellow resident Jarryd Sunkel wasn't so fortunate.
"We got a few things that have defrosted that we probably going to have to throw away or make do with whatever we got but my fridges have defrosted. I just feel the community is outraged at the fact that they've been sitting nearly 40 hours with no electricity, and in some cases, there was no water."
Concerns have also been raised about opportunistic criminals taking advantage of the power cuts.
The Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Business is warning that the rise in criminal activities during long streaks of load shedding could lead to a local business catastrophe.
The chamber's been reacting to the theft of power cables in Hammarsdale that's left an entire industrial complex - which runs 14 factories - in the dark since Monday.
It's understood the cables were stolen during load shedding.
"The businesses have to work on a no work no pay because they cannot produce or afford to pay,” says Michael D'Ercole, who manages an industrial complex in the area.
“Normally when you have a business interruption you can claim from insurance for business interruption losses but even insurance companies refuse to pay to out."
READ: Load shedding risk will diminish substantially in next 18 months, De Ruyter tells MPs
The DA is also gearing up for a march to the ANC Luthuli House headquarters in Johannesburg on Wednesday morning.
The party says its demonstration will centre around what it's calling an ‘ANC-engineered electricity crisis’, load shedding and tariff hikes.
