Malabar family in futile bid to sort out power woes

A MALABAR resident says she and her family are living like prisoners in their own home after a huge hole, filled with live electrical cables, was left open by the municipality which had come to fix a supply issue.

Monowara Bhamjee 50, said she has been battling for the better part of two weeks to have the hole, which is in front of her Haworthia Drive home, filled in.

She also wants the temporary electrical connection fixed because both the hole and the wires pose a serious danger.

She said damage had already been done to two visitors’ cars – both of which were damaged when they drove into the hole.

The Bhamjees now receive electricity through a makeshift connection from her neighbour’s yard.

Bhamjee said the live cables were clearly visible and easily accessible.

“It rained so heavily this past weekend and I was so scared that something would happen to me, or even worse, a family member of mine,” she said.

Bhamjee’s ordeal began on the evening of November 7, when her electricity cut out without any warning.

“Initially I thought it was just another stage of load-shedding, but when I looked at the schedule, there was nothing scheduled for us that day. This [the outage] continued for two days,” Bhamjee said.

Approaching the third day, Bhamjee notified officials at the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Munelek offices about her problem.

She said a contractor was brought in to find the fault but could not immediately locate the error in the line.

The contractor then dug up parts of her driveway, as well as a huge chunk of the neighbour’s lawn, which has still not been fixed.

“It’s been a constant struggle to reach officials to come and sort out the issue,” she said.

“I have seen them no more than three or four times, and when the temporary connection was made, the engineer came, made the connection and left.

“He never even explained to my husband or I what they were doing or when the issue would be sorted out.”

Numerous attempts by The Herald to contact officials at the Munelek offices were unsuccessful.

However, municipal spokesman Mthubanzi Mniki said: “I will follow up with the executive director of electricity and energy.

“I will only be able to give you feedback once the investigation into the matter has been concluded,” he said.

“If an official fails to deliver as expected, we intend on finding out where he was at the time and why he was not on duty as expected.

“I also need to make sure that the complaint was lodged in our system, because we encourage residents to lodge any complaints they might have,” Mniki said.