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The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Springs welcomes the major improvements in the City of Ekurhuleni’s Energy department that saw the building of a new temporary substation and restoration of electricity to over 200 000 residents.

On 20 May 2022, the Munic substation, a major substation that provides electricity to Springs, burnt down leaving the entire town without power.

Had this power outage not been attended to so rapidly, it would have plunged businesses into a crisis as they rely on electricity to function. This would have threatened business confidence and would have led to job losses.

The prompt response by the metro is a huge improvement to the type of service the people of Ekurhuleni experienced under the previous ANC administration.

In May 2021, under the ANC, the entire Springs town was plunged into darkness for four days due to a single cable fault.

In 2020, again, under the ANC, a substation fire in Springs saw large parts of the town without electricity for more than two weeks, while the business industry was plagued with outages and cuts for a further two years, placing thousands of jobs at risk.

Residents felt neglected by the ANC-governed Ekurhuleni metro and that the administration was indifferent to their plight.

In contrast, under the new DA-led administration, the energy department moved quickly to restore energy despite the scale of damage, building a temporary substation in just five days, and having started with energy restores less than 24 hours after the fire. 95% of the town was back online in just five days.

This is a real demonstration of the DA difference, confirming that the DA does get things done.

The DA welcomes the approach by the MMC for Energy, Cllr Senzi Sebeko, and Executive Mayor, Ald Tania Campbell – to trust the engineers in the city and not interfere in their work, opting to support them and ensure that they have all the resources to do their job.

The DA applauds and thanks the engineers and technicians who worked for days on end, with very little sleep, to get the power back online.

Springs is no longer the forgotten town of the metro, and the community is grateful that resources and staff from across the metro were seconded to Springs to restore the electricity.

This is the DA difference in action. We look forward to further improvements in service delivery in Springs and across the metro in the coming months.

Issued by DA Springs Constituency Head Ashor Sarupen