According to the the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Naledi Local Municipality , for the past ten years the smallholdings and households on the Delarey and Schweizer road have been subjected to severe electricity cuts, residents have to endure long consecutive hours without electricity due to poor maintenance of the electrical infrastructure.

DA Councillor, Jan Brand, expressed, in a statement , his concerns of the municipality’s inability to attend to the basic and yet critical part of service delivery, which directly impacts on the safety of residents, including fixing the electricity problems that currently engulfs the whole municipality.

“This negatively affects businesses who suffer in losses not only in productivity but incur damage to their equipment as a result of the unstable electricity supply. In August 2019, three transformers were burnt down, only two of them have been fixed. The transformer will cost the municipality R400 000 to fix, money which the municipality does not have. This leaves households to each use up to 40 Amperes (amps), this is too low and causes residents’ electricity to trip and go off for more than 20 minutes if they plug in more than one electronic device. For the past three years, almost all the streets lights within the town have not been working due to a burnt-out cable, the DA has on numerous occasions asked the municipality to replace it but nothing is being done to fix the problem.” Said Councillor Brand .

The municipality is said to not have the necessary equipments to attend to the occurrence of electrical faults that regularly occur around Vryburg. The lack of street lights has allowed criminals to take advantage, there has been an increase in crime, particularly, house burglaries and robberies.

According to Brand, the automatic timer switch is also broken and has not been replaced, which causes many streets in Vryburg to either permanently be in the dark as the street lights have to be manually turned on and off from each light pole.

The party intends to write to the MEC for Cooperative Governance, Gordon Kegakilwe, asking him to intervene in the municipality’s failure to restore electricity supply to several areas and to fix streetlights.

-The VIP Team

-DA NW MEDIA