Benoni residents left in darkness for days demand answers from Ekurhuleni Metro

Benoni residents are raising urgent calls for answers from the Ekurhuleni Metro as they endure a crippling electricity outage that has now lasted for a staggering ten days.

Many households in the suburb have been plunged into darkness, severely disrupting daily routines and leading to heartbreaking losses, including thousands of rands worth of spoiled food.

The plight of the residents became critical when power was temporarily restored to the suburb after outages that began on 23 January, only to be plunged back into darkness just three hours later. The affected areas include the popular suburbs of Rynfield, Northmead, Mackenzie Park, Rynsoord, New Modder, Western Extension, and the central business district of Benoni.

Among the residents suffering from severe consequences is Jeff Smith, a local man living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) who relies on supplemental oxygen for his health. The extended power outage poses a life-threatening situation for Smith, who spoke to ENCA, describing his circumstances as "desperate."

With temperatures in summer soaring and his oxygen supply at risk, the struggle has become unbearable.

“I need the oxygen overnight because my blood oxygen levels get too low. The only alternative is to try and sleep upright and having a recently injured back, I struggle. Every morning I’m feeling tired and weak. It’s unbearable,”

Adding to his distress,  revealed they have had to discard at least three bin bags of spoiled food. “We’re on pension. It’s depressing. In this day and age, this should not happen. We have an inverter, but the oxygen machine flattens it out in two hours, and I can’t charge it. It’s been really desperate,” he told the broadcaster. 

Ward 73 councillor Mary Goby echoed the residents' sentiments, slamming the Ekurhuleni Metro for its handling of the situation. “In the beginning, they were keeping us up to date, but now we go 72 hours without any updates. Ekurhuleni should have given us feedback on the progress, even if it was every 24 hours. Our biggest problem is that the communication is very bad,” Goby stated, expressing frustration over the evident lack of communication from the city officials regarding the ongoing power crisis.

The situation in Benoni raises significant concerns not just about the immediate impact on residents’ lives but also about the longer-term implications for essential services and infrastructure management in the Ekurhuleni Metro region. 

​VF Plus has written a letter to the city manager, Kagiso Lerutla, requesting an explanation of the actual causes of the daily power outages in Benoni, what steps are being taken to sustainably repair infrastructure and how cable theft will be combated.

THE STAR