On behalf of City Power, I would like to apologise to all residents from Westgate, Groblers Park, Pennyville, Matholasville, Princess Crossing and Ruimsig for the power outages experienced in their communities since Friday.
I have been assured that technicians are working around the clock to restore power. Unfortunately it is taking longer than expected to restore power due to multiple faults discovered on the network as a result of third-party digging. Cable theft and vandalism coupled to a network overload has also worsened the problem.

Several attempts to restore power has resulted in repeated tripping at the substation. As a result, the substation has been switched off in an attempt to limit equipment failures.

I appeal to residents to keep their appliances switched off to avoid network overload and tripping once power is restored. City Power has deployed adequate materials and technicians to the substation, but damaged cables and blown transformers take a minimum of 24-hours to repair because joints have to be fixed, tested, refilled with oil if necessary and re-energised before switching on the power.

Residents can follow progress in this regard on Twitter at @CityPowerJhb and by tuning in to their local radio station.

Media enquiries:

Cllr Nico de Jager

MMC: Environment and Infrastructure Services Department

083 899 2127

NicoDe@joburg.org.za">NicoDe@joburg.org.za