Eskom has cautioned residents about the severe risks associated with over loaded transformer and meter bypassing, warning that these issues could pose significant threats to property and result in prolonged power outages.
This alert follows an operation where Eskom, in collaboration with the police and City Law Enforcement officers, dismantled over 100 illegal connections in Delft on Tuesday.
The operation formed part of Eskom’s effort to eradicate the spate of illegal connections in communities.
“These unsafe acts often lead to innocent children sustaining serious injuries and running the risk of being electrocuted,” said Promise Ntuli, Eskom’s senior maintenance and operations management manager in the Western Cape.
Transformers are key to the safe distribution of electricity from poles to homes and businesses.
“Transformer overload and meter bypassing hold serious consequences to properties as transformers can explode and ultimately leave the area without supply for prolonged periods.”
Meanwhile, the City believes politics and misinformation were behind the threats against City staff and contractors performing their official duties in the Lavender Hill and Hanover Park areas.
“The core issue revolves around investigations into alleged electricity meter tampering.
“The majority of residents in these areas are paying for their City-supplied electricity services with just 75 tampered meters found and 175 meters bypassed out of a total of 939 meters checked for bypassing and defects in Lavender Hill alone,” said energy Mayco member Xanthea Limberg.
She said it would be to the detriment of the majority of law-abiding residents of these areas if the City had to suspend all electricity services to areas where threats were being made against staff and contractors.
“What has sparked the mobilisation has been the City’s standard metro-wide meter functionality investigations, which found that only 26.6% of the checked 939 electricity metres in Lavender Hill have either been tampered with or bypassed.
“By far most of our customers are not tampering or bypassing in this area.
“It is best practice when investigating meters for bypassing, tampering, defects or ageing infrastructure, to replace the meters with new meters,” she said.
She refuted claims that the new meters caused electricity costs to go up.
“These meters merely measure electricity usage and do not consume any of the customer’s electricity.
“The cost between the older and new meters is exactly the same. But where tampered or defective meters have been replaced with new meters, customers will notice a change in their purchasing patterns as they will be making accurate payments toward their electricity consumption.
“Again, we have extensive help available to those who qualify for assistance in terms of the Free Basic Electricity and the highly subsidised Lifeline tariff,” Limberg said.
Cape Times