The City of Tshwane says it has recently repaired the pylons that fell onto the N4 freeway, plunging thousands of households into darkness.
As the city grapples with restoring power after the collapse of several pylons on the N4 freeway in Pretoria East, it has emerged that Tshwane was notified last year that one of the pylons was on a verge of collapsing, its integritycompromised due to vandalism.
On Wednesday, the City of Tshwane admitted to TimesLIVE Premium that it had been made aware of this.
Lindela Mashigo, City of Tshwane spokesperson, said the city had reacted to the alert and attended to the pylons, but “thieves went back and damaged them again”.
Mashigo said those in the scrap metal business were responsible for cutting up the steel support structures of the pylons, compromising their integrity.
“We were made aware of the status of the pylons. We effected repairs, hence we’re appealing to the community as everyone has a responsibility to stop this,” Mashigo said.
Mashigo said the city needed the support of the community to win the battle against criminals who are cutting up supporting steel structures of the pylons.
“We do conduct inspections to look into conditions of our infrastructure, but due to the rise of cable theft and other metals, we need everyone to come on board,” Mashigo said.
Seven pylons that supported 132kV powerlines collapsed onto the N4, leaving 17 suburbs, including Mamelodi, Eersterust, Queenswood and Waltloo Industrial Area, without power.
Other affected areas, according to Tshwane, included large parts of Pretoria East suburbs, northern areas and several portions of Centurion, south of the city.
Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink said the city understood the frustration of residents who have been without power.
“We are working on temporary measures to ensure that we ease the burden of prolonged power outages. The city is working with internal and Eskom teams to restore electricity in a two-pronged approach,” Brink said.
He said the plan included rerouting the city’s power supply “to service-affected areas, where possible, while Eskom teams are working with us to replace the electricity pylons that fell over”.
“So far, we have made significant progress in restoring power to about 40% to 50% of the areas where the infrastructure is in good condition and responsive to backfeeding,” Brink said on Wednesday.
He said special attention will be afforded areas such as Mamelodi, Eersterust, Queenswood and Waltloo Industrial Area ,which have been without power since Sunday.
Brink said he had asked officials “to find a way to reconnect as many areas as technically possibly”.
The city said its energy technical team has already fed the Waltloo and Mamelodi substations with electricity from the Njala infeed substation, and implemented load rotation in areas that have power to re-channel power to areas that have experienced a prolonged outage.
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