Scores of Finsbury residents in Randfontein, who have been living in darkness for over a week following an outage on January 6, took to the streets on Monday to voice their anger and dissatisfaction at the municipality.
They barricaded the roads with rubble and burning tyres and demanded for the municipality to intervene and restore power.
The protest follows a power outage caused by explosions at two electricity substations in the area, one at Tafelberg Street and the other at the La Farge plant. The outage has affected more than 11 000 residents.
At the time of explosions, Eskom had just returned power after loadshedding at night.
Bongani Nkambule, a water, sanitation and electricity official at the Rand West City local municipality, said: “It will take three to four weeks to implement temporary relief measures to restore electricity to the residential areas of ward two, while a permanent solution may take months.”
A resident, who chose not to be identified, said: “We have been without electricity since the 7th of January 2023 as a result of the Lafarge substation that exploded. It has been said that the explosion was caused by cable theft right after loadshedding returned.
“The residents decided on the protest because the municipality has been quiet about when it intends to restore electricity to affected areas. We are told that it will take up to three to four weeks for electricity to be restored, which is bad for the community.
“This has caused damage to food and meat that we have bought for January. It has also had a negative impact on us emotionally even financially.”
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