BRITS POS – GROENKLOOF - Services must be paid for, claims Eskom, but that is not true for residents in the Groenkloof area, next to Majakaneng.
According to owners, this issue has been with Eskom for years, without any actions/solutions and enough is now enough.
Eskom reported the primary cause of the outages to Majakaneng is overloading of the local electricity network, which has necessitated the implementation of load reduction measures to prevent system failure.
It is understandable that illegal connections place further strain on the network, but surely Eskom must also protect the interests of its paying consumers.
Residents claim that they don’t have electricity -
* daily from 15:45 to 21:00, allegedly for the past 4 years;
* on weekends from around 09:00 to late in the afternoon and again at night;
*After electricity has been switched on, it trips 80% of the time after 5 to 10 minutes and then it takes an average of 3 hours to switch the electricity back on and every time a new fault needs to be logged with Eskom and a new fault number obtained;
*Eskom’s verbal excuse all the time is that Majakaneng is the main culprit and that the line is overloaded.
With no electricity available, residents have to find alternative sources to prepare meals, borehole water needs to be pumped to tanks and then to households; elderly need frail care. In an area with high crime rates, external lighting and security fences are imperative for safety reasons.
It needs to be said that not everyone in the area can afford solar or generators, especially not when you have to pay the following monthly rates before using one unit of electricity:
Service and administration charge @ R24.50 per day - R 735.00
Network Capacity Charge @ R62.20 per day - R1 866.00
Network Demand charge - R 384.14
Ancillary Service Charge - R 2.55
Generation Capacity Charge - R 81.30
TOTAL MONTHLY ESKOM CHARGES TO CONSUMER
BEFORE THE CONSUMER HAS USED ONE UNIT
OF ELECTRICITY - R3 068.99
Residents of Groenkloof now demand, that as paying consumers, Eskom has to supply electricity as promised as consumers are charged daily rates for continuous power supply.
(At our going to press, ESKOM employees were busy cutting illegal electrical connections in Majakaneng).
