Pietermaritzburg is heading in the same direction as Cape Town with the possibility of ongoing power failures — only this time it is not Eskom to blame, but the city’s own internal system, the Witness website reported on Monday.
It quoted sources within the municipality as saying the system is failing ”because there has only been sporadic maintenance carried out for the past six to seven years and there are no qualified and experienced staff to do the work”.
The KwaZulu-Natal provincial capital has an electricity department ”with hardly any electricians”.
”While planning technicians have been given jobs, not a single electrician has been employed in the last seven years,” the report said.
The problem is compounded by the number of new developments mushrooming in the city, straining an already overworked network. There has been inadequate planning for the additional load and the situation is worsened by stringent budget cuts.
The prognosis for the winter does not look good.
”During these months of heavy demand for power, a rotational load-shedding system is worked out by which electricity is switched off for an hour or more in different areas. So far there has been no planning for such a system for this winter,” the Witness report said.
Sources described the city’s electricity department as a sinking ship.
”Last year there was a major trip and power went off in three-quarters of the city.
”Publicly the department blamed Eskom, but the fault was internal. Blaming Eskom means that there is no scrutiny of the department’s inadequacies and these are the issues that the new council has to address,” according to staff quoted in the report. — Sapa