Johannesburg residents face another day in the dark amid power outages

Johannesburg residents are enduring yet another day without electricity, with no clear indication of when power will be restored.

Various areas across the metro have been plunged into darkness since the early hours of Friday, while some communities say they have been experiencing outages since earlier in the week.

A walk through Johannesburg’s CBD is marked by the constant hum of generators stationed outside businesses, while some of the few traffic lights that are usually operational have gone dark.

Meanwhile, on its various social media platforms, City Power said its teams are on the ground attending to multiple outages.

The outages have been linked to a range of issues, including a fire at the Central substation, which supplies electricity to several communities.

According to the utility, there are more than 1,200 open outage calls from residents from the past 24 hours, while around 10 substations remain affected by active outages.

Some areas have been given an estimated restoration time of 18:00, including Commissioner Street East, Albert Street West, Fox Street West, Marshall Street West and Marshall Street East  all impacted by the fire incident reported on Saturday.

Residents in other affected areas, however, remain in limbo, waiting to see whether electricity will be restored tonight or whether they will have to endure another cold night without power.