KDM faces heavy reprehension over weekend blackouts

By Musa Mnyandu

Communities residing in the northern part of KwaDukuza believe that KwaDukuza Municipality did not cover itself with glory over the past weekend.

This follows a literary black weekend for most parts of KwaDukuza, with a total blackout occurring on Sunday through the northern grid network.

And the only excuse to come from KDM's Electrical Engineering Services Department to account for the outage was “a fault at Glenhills substation taking down the network from Eskom side”. Whether this explanation qualifies as English language or not, remains to be seen. What has been seen, however, is that the affected communities were not impressed at all.

Added to that was the misery of higher stages of loadshedding, for which the residents of KwaDukuza are never compensated for the energy time lost due to breakdowns and faults.

One resident felt that KwaDukuza Municipality manages its electricity supply in a very callous fashion, with no care about the extremely adverse the prolonged outages have on the already overburdened consumers and businesses.

Reports suggest that the municipality is struggling with, among other unaddressed challenges that severely hamper service delivery:

• Human resources shortages;

• Shortage of functioning vehicles and tools, with some vehicles said to be broken down, some sitting with expired licence discs; and

• Inadequate capacity to manage