Come Thursday eThekwini residents will be plunged into further darkness when the municipality reverts to blackouts from stage 1.
Since the devastating floods in April last year, eThekwini has load-shed only from stage 4 because of the havoc wreaked by the rains on its electricity infrastructure.
Last week, much to the ire of residents and the business sector, the powers that be announced the city would no longer be on reduced levels of load-shedding “that eThekwini has enjoyed since the 2022 floods”.
“The new schedule has been introduced following discussions between eThekwini and Eskom, the outcome of which was that eThekwini will now experience load-shedding from stage 1 like the rest of the country. This ends the reduced levels of load-shedding that eThekwini has enjoyed since the 2022 floods,” the city informed residents and businesses.
Cause for concern is that the municipality has admitted its infrastructure is not up to scratch to handle the full load-shedding schedule. Repairs to damaged infrastructure is still under way.
As it stands — apart from load-shedding — protracted power outages have become a daily event mainly due to weak substations tripping.
This has left many households without power for hours, sometimes days.
“We are aware of outages affecting the following areas and our technicians are working on restoring power ...” has become an anthem for the municipality.
Residents and businesses’ main concerns are not around eThekwini experiencing load-shedding like the rest of the country. It's about not knowing whether the power will return once the lights have gone out.
And as we've seen in the rest of the country, power outages lead to water outages. Often, residents find themselves without water and electricity as some areas require pumps to carry water from lower-lying dams to water treatment works and reservoirs.
Umgeni Water recently voiced its concern about the impact of load-shedding “on its ability to fulfil its mandate to provide an uninterrupted supply of drinking water”.
It said Eskom and municipalities had been approached to consider providing dedicated power lines to each pump station. If this happens, then the pump stations will not be affected during load-shedding.
Durban is only just recovering from the contamination to its beaches from sewage spills because of flood-damaged and vandalised pump houses.
Residents fear that further interrupted electricity supply will again increase the risk of more sewage spillages.
This situation caused an environmental catastrophe and cost the city millions of rand in tourism revenue because beaches had to be shut.
Residents fear further interrupted electricity supply will again increase the risk of more sewage spillages.
To add insult to injury, the municipality has proposed tariff increases for electricity, rates, sanitation and refuse removal.
The city is proposing a 21.91% electricity tariff hike for businesses and households, which is higher than Eskom's municipal increase of 18.48%.
Residents have widely rejected the proposal, saying they can ill-afford to pay for services that never run smoothly and are substandard.
Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda reportedly said: “The economic climate has made above inflation tariff increases inevitable. The three biggest contributors to the increases are out of our hands, that is, the Eskom increase, Umgeni Water Board increase and salary increases.”
While the city says it will allocate funds to upgrade electricity infrastructure in the new financial year, whether this materialises remains to be seen.
Right now residents are worried about how the municipality will mitigate substation trips.
It's the city's track record of poor service delivery that has angered residents and sees threats of all sorts of action from legal to protests.
In the face of poor service delivery and increased load-shedding, is it fair to ask people to pay more?
Darkness is again looming over a city that has faced one catastrophe after another in recent years — from the pandemic and the lootings to floods and mass killings — and now it's bracing for more. The city needs to show residents it is committed to fixing the broken infrastructure, otherwise it would bring eThekwini to its knees.
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