Kinross residents refute an excuse from the municipality after they lost their home appliances.
In some homes, all the electrical appliances burnt and were left with nothing.
“The problem was not caused by load shedding or lightnings, but sabotage.
Now we have fallen victims of the people who are fighting among each other for the fibre installation project,” said angry residents who added that the people installing the fibre will get money, while residents will lose money when replacing burnt appliances.
Prior the installation of the vodacom fibre, residents did not experience any problem.
According to some of the people at Ext 25, there was a group of people who were not happy that the sub-contract was given to people who resides in embalenhle while there are existing companies in Kinross.
The companies sub-contracted to the main company are said to be belonging to a ward councillor from Embalenhle and a GMM official.
The said sub-contractors also attended the residents meetings and when reporter asked them how did they get to be appointed for sub-contracting they said, “The tendering of this contract was not handled by the municipality.
It was handled by a private company and also contested by other local companies, but most of them did not qualify.”
Since the project started in Kinross, 11 mini-substations were reported to have been tempered with and more than fifty households lost their appliances.
A meeting was called and the company responsible for installing the fibre agreed to replace the damaged appliances.
Residents also demanded that the municipality should protect or barricade all the mini-substation.
Currently the substations are not protected and some are not even locked, making it easy for anyone to open them.
The municipality was also contacted for a comment and distanced itself from the problem, referring to it as vandalism.
The municipality said, “There was vandalism on the network at four mini sub areas.
The neutrals were stolen as well as the protective earthing of the network. This cause surges to go through residents houses and hence appliances were damaged.
This was a vandalism which compromises the network and put people’s assets and lives at risk.
The municipality is not responsible for any damages because it was an unplanned outage due to vandalism.”
When asked what measures will be put in place to ensure that it does not happen again, the municipality said the department of technical services has set aside funds to acquire tamper proof enclosures which will aid to curb the situation.