- City Power officials remained inside the depot as Hillside residents marched to the area demanding electricity.
- Residents complained about unending blackouts caused by cable theft, overloading and illegal connections.
- They are demanding a new substation away from surrounding informal settlements.
City Power officials at the Lenasia depot were forced to remain inside their offices on Tuesday as Hillside residents in Lenasia South, blocked roads leading to the premises demanding electricity.
Residents have complained about power blackouts in the area and have accused City Power of not communicating with them.
They took to the streets on Tuesday and blocked roads with burning tyres and other objects as they marched to City Power offices.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said protesters made it difficult for officials to respond to outages from the Lenasia depot.
"Protesters from Hillside have blockaded [the] City Power depot entrance complaining about outages in their area. This is the second consecutive day the depot is unable to operate due to a protest.
"On Monday, protesters blockaded the gates seeking to address some issues with the regional director of the City of Johannesburg Region G," said Mangena.
Mangena said constant outages had plagued residents of Hillside for the past week.
Outages were caused by repeated cable theft incidents, and overloading due to illegal connections by informal settlements neighbouring Hillside.
"The overloading even led to a transformer blowing up last week. We are aware of their problems and are currently meeting with the community leader."
Mangena continued:
Hillside community leader Lloyd Phiri said they were demanding a new substation from City Power.
"We don't owe City Power because we buy electricity. Those who don't buy electricity are enjoying our electricity for free. Last year, we gave City Power our memorandum requesting to be delinked from a substation we are sharing with informal settlements substation.
"We don't want problems of overloading. The only electricity problem we can tolerate is load shedding because it affects the entire country. If they don't attend to our grievances, we will elevate our protests," said Phiri.