Makana municipality has warned in a notice that residents should be prepared for an interruption to the supply of electricity by Eskom, because of urgent and necessary maintenance for most of Sunday 23 June.
Makana municipality has warned in a notice that residents should be prepared for an interruption to the supply of electricity by Eskom, because of urgent and necessary maintenance for most of Sunday 23 June.
Citing urgent Eskom maintenance as the reason for the cut, the notice said that power would be out from 8am until 5pm on Sunday.
"We don't want to have power outages during Festival, so there will be a power shut-down and also water outages although not simultaneously," municipal spokesperson Mncedisi Boma told Grocott's Mail.
"Water will be affected because the pumps use electricity, there will be water in the reservoirs but when they are empty there will be no water."
The entire city, including Rhodes campus, will be affected by this outage.
The municipality has warned residents to treat all electricity points as live for the duration of the outage.
The outage is in order to enable the Municipality to repair and upgrade some of their networks in preparation for the upcoming National Arts Festival.
"The electricity shut-down is a planned maintenance [exercise]which will be done with Eskom. It seeks to address the recent power outages."
During the Infrastructure Development meeting on Wednesday, chairperson of the portfolio Nomhle Gaga said the water outages in Makana were caused by the problems with electricity.
Infrastructure and Engineering services director Thembinkosi Myalato said the municipality was delivering water to areas affected by the water outages.
Asked by councillor Les Reynolds if the Festival would be affected by the power outages, Myalato said his directorate was well prepared.
"We will have the shut-down on Sunday, and with God's prayers we hope for a clean Festival with no problems. We will have contractors on standby. We will hire mobile toilets and water trucks to attend to any problem that may arise," Myalato said.
Gaga said, "Energy is a national problem but we must champion it as Makana… we controlled swine-flu in Makana and that happened during Festival."
The municipality has released toll-free numbers that residents can call if they have any problems or queries.
Councillor Gaga has also given her personal cell-phone number for residents who experience any difficulty with the toll-free numbers or their operators.
071 461 3335
