Residents in the Oatlands area were up in arms after their electricity was turned off for four hours on Wednesday afternoon.
Residents in the Oatlands area were up in arms after their electricity was turned off for four hours on Wednesday afternoon.
One of the residents, Janet Longman, says that the municipality didn’t warn them about the cut which she says was due to the contruction of Aries Nest flats in Cawood Street. In a letter she wrote to Grocott’s Mail on Wednesday, she stated that she was busy making Christmas cakes when the electricity was turned off.
She says that she called the municipality to enquire and was informed that there’s "a big truck offloading things at Aries Nest" and "the lines had to be switched off because the truck might touch them". Another resident from a home for the aged who didn’t wish be named, says he was not warned about the electricity being turned off. "I was busy making breakfast for my wife who is sick in bed and suddenly the electricity was cut off," he said.
In response to the residents’ complains, the Electricity department’s Mzomhle Radu acknowledged the outage. He said the department had received a letter from the property developers to turn off the electricity between 10am and 2pm on Wednesday because of the extensive work they were doing using a crane. "When we received the letter we immediately drafted a notice which we sent to all properties that were going to be affected. We sent them on Monday so as to give residents a 24 hour warning, " he said.
"The construction workers were offloading concrete blocks using a crane, but they were working too close to the electric lines. We switched off power in the central substation for that period and turned it back on at 2pm. It was for safety reasons." The affected streets were: Cawood, Spring, Hodges and some parts of Caldecott Street.
