WHY STILL NO ELECTRICITY!?

Ivory Park- Last week Thursday the 1st of August 2019 Eskom met with councilors of Ivory Park, Ebony Park and Kaalfontein; City of Johannesburg officials and IPTA (Ivory Park Taxi Association) to solve the impasse of the Electricity Outages and find a suitable solution to reconnect houses that have been without electricity.

A number of transformers in the areas have failed and some for even more than 2 months because of illegal connections and meter bypasses, resulting in network overloading.

Some communities have refused for Eskom employees to remove illegal connections. The meeting held on the 1st of this month collapsed and no solution was found.

Motlhabane Ramashi, operations and maintenance senior manager in the Gauteng Operating Unit, issued a statement on Wednesday morning regarding the impasse.

We would like to urge the community of Ivory Park to collaborate with us to adequately deal with this matter by allowing us access to the area,’

“Eskom employee safety will take priority at all times and the community can assist by submitting a written commitment to Eskom guaranteeing its staff safety and non-interference while they perform their work,” said Ramashi.

“Eskom is not in a position to continuously replace failed mini-substations and pole-mounted transformers in areas where the residents are not paying for their electricity. Non-payment of electricity does not only impact on the security of supply for paying customers, but also contributes to increased energy and revenue losses, coupled with increased operational costs.

“This is not sustainable and not in line with Eskom’s revenue management practices. The non-payment further frustrates efforts to improve on Eskom’s financial and operational objectives. The community of Ivory Park, surrounding areas and others in similar conditions in Gauteng, are urged to collaborate with Eskom to ensure supply is restored and paid for.”

This is after reports stated that Eskom generated R33-billion cash from the sale of electricity in 2018, down from R38-billion the previous year. Its outstanding debt rose to R441-billion in the year, up from R389-billion. Other liabilities added R115-billion to the debt pile.

Eskom has urged communities of Ivory Park and surrounding areas to collaborate with the power utility.