The City of Tshwane says that residents who have been without electricity for the past seven days will finally get to have a warm shower later on Tuesday.
MMC for utility services Darryl Moss told TimesLIVE that after engineers had replaced a substation that burnt down‚ they discovered that thieves had helped themselves to the cables when there was no current running through them.
This left a number of suburbs without power on Monday night after the city had earlier committed to having all power restored.
“Last night we energised the transformer and we started switching. When we started switching we started discovering various cable faults along the way‚ mostly caused by cable theft. We were‚ however‚ during the course of the evening and this morning able to supply power to the Silver Lakes area. We still have some issues around Equestria because we need to fix the cables which were damaged.
“We actually had eight cable theft incidents in Equestria. We are not sure where these incidents happened because the system did not have power but obviously they happened during the course of the week‚” said Moss.
He added: “We are probably about 90% (of the way) now. The only areas that don’t have power are certain areas of Equestria. The substation itself is fully operational. It is only some cable faults that we need to repair. We really expect that even the areas now that do not have power should have it by about 4pm. I think by this evening everyone will have a hot shower and all those things.”
A number of suburbs have been without power for the past seven days in Pretoria after an electrical fault destroyed the Wapadrand substation‚ plunging parts of the capital into darkness.
This left residents and businesses scrambling to find alternative sources of energy.
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