Balfour residents endured weeks without electricity, causing some of them to incur substantial costs from alternative power sources.Eskom acknowledged the outage on 24 August, almost a week after it began, attributing it to the failure of a transformer.
While the lights flickered back on 31 August, the effects of the blackout run deep, with residents grappling with hefty generator costs and spoiled frozen goods. "I have a small business, and I have to close it until we have electricity again. I am fortunate enough to have a generator to keep the household running, but it is not cheap to run it even for a few hours a day," Du Toit said during the outage."The situation worsened when a pipe burst on Monday, leaving the community without running water. Municipal workers who were on strike refused to carry out repairs.
"To restore supply, the municipality must conduct an audit to identify the root causes of faults within its network. This includes auditing for illegal connections and meter bypasses. Once the assessment and repairs are completed, the damaged equipment will be replaced based on the availability of necessary resources," Eskom said.