UITENHAGE - NMB MUNICIPALITY COMMITS TO PRIORITISING ELECTRICAL PROBLEMS IN THE AREA

Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Member of the Mayoral Committee for Electricity and Energy, Councillor Luxolo Namette has committed to give a special and urgent attention to the challenges of electricity in Uitenhage.

For the past five years the industrial town of Uitenhage has been   experiencing persistent electricity cuts.

This has been caused by a number of reasons like, ageing infrastructure, cable theft and vandalism.

The latest reason in the past year has been the robberies and attacks of electricity employees attending to reported faults or outages. 

Today(January 6,2021),  MMC Namette did an oversight visit to three sub stations in Uitenhage that were recently affected by attempted cable theft.

The two substations that were affected were in Ponana Tini Road in KwaNobuhle and one in Market Square in Uitenhage CBD. 

The attempted cable theft led to a cable damage which affected a huge area of KwaNobuhle.

"Uitenhage is one of the key drivers of the City's economy, job creator and a contributor to our rates and taxes. For some time the electricity challenges źin this town have been put by the wayside. Part of my urgent priorities is to stabilise electricity distribition to Uitenhage. Both the industry and the people of this beautiful town need to be confident about their electricity distribution so that they can assist us to draw in more investment into their City. Security of electricity distribution then becomes critical," said MMC Namette. 

Uitenhage is the home of VWSA manufacturing plant and many other small and medium supporting manufacturing plants. 

On Thursday (January 7, 2021) the MMC will be meeting the Electricity and Energy Directorate  senior management to get an opportunity to engage them on their plans for Uitenhage and budget provisions thereof. 

"Electricity infrastructure is very expensive, we need to back our plans with sufficient budget provisions. Failure to do so will just be lip service," added Cllr Namette. 

MMC Namente will also visit a number of electricity infrastructure sites in Uitenhage and Despatch with the intention to come with a pro-active approach to deal with existing challenges. 

"In as much as we do our work, we continue to experience an attack on both our infrastructure and employees through criminal activities like cable theft and robberies. I am making a clarion call to the people of Uitenhage to work with us to root out these elements. They are costing us much needed jobs," said Cllr Namette. 

via - NMBM