JOHANNESBURG - Cable theft, vandalism and ageing infrastructure are plunging Johannesburg into darkness.
The City’s electricity grid is under fire after a spate of substation blazes. The outages have left various areas in darkness.
Last Monday, four people were injured and scores displaced after a Doornfontein substation caught fire, leading to the partial collapse of a building.
A fire at the Bree substation also resulted in a power outage affecting several parts of the City.
City Power says the recent substation fires were because of theft of infrastructure.
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“Bree Substation has been hit with cable theft and vandalism three times in the past two months. Two of those incidents resulted in a fire that plunged the City into darkness,” said City Power’s Isaac Mangena.
He said the City’s electricity problems were also compounded by ageing infrastructure, with City Power needing about R44-billion to address this.
This year, City Power was only allocated R1.36-billion to spend on bulk infrastructure including the replacement of transformers and cables.
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“That is not sufficient enough to move the needle in dealing with the challenges that we are facing,” Mangena adds.
“Most of this infrastructure is as old as the city of Gold itself. About 60 percent of the outages are attributed directly to ageing infrastructure.
"We are not really investing enough in terms of ensuring that we replace most of the old infrastructure with the new. It’s like an old car; if you service it, it can still take you far and last you for a long time.”