Ceres residents fuming after being left in the dark by cable theft
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Ceres residents are fuming after being left in the dark due to cable theft. File picture
Cape Town - Ceres, the largest town in the Witzenberg Local Municipality, has been plunged into darkness following vandalism and major cable theft at the substation (Koue bokkeveld).
The municipality said all control and power cables were cut/stolen.
“This means that power will be off in the Ceres area until such time that repairs are effected. Please prepare for a very long outage, this is a major incident,” the municipality said in a statement.
The incident could take a day, if not more, to fix.
Angry residents blamed the scrap metal buyers in the area, saying their presence encouraged vandalism.
“I think the businesses of buying ‘recycled’ metals should not exist, they just encourage the activity of stealing. Looks like copper is paid as gold if desperate people risk their lives to steal it,” said one resident.
Eskom confirmed Ceres and surrounding areas had been without electricity supply since the early hours of Tuesday morning.
The power utility said they do not know when the electricity would be restored and asked the community to be patient.
“Technicians are on site attending to the fault. The estimated time for restoration (ETR) has not yet been determined.”
Eskom requested customers to treat all electrical installations as live for the full duration of the interruption.
“Eskom customers are encouraged to use Alfred the chatbot! Alfred will assist with logging electricity faults and giving immediate feedback, without having to call the Contact Centre.”
Community structures are planning to meet and discuss how they can help protect Eskom infrastructure from being vandalised.
Weekend Argus