Municipal services in Ikemeleng

Steven Ramokhula

Ikemeleng Kroondal

Rustenburg local municipality

13 July 2021

Electricity is a problem to the entire country due to Eskom’s unserviced power stations. The whole country has been experiencing load shedding. This is also caused by people who connected illegal electricity. Ikemeleng is playing a very big role in illegal connection of electricity like any other informal settlement in the country. The municipality does nothing about the matter.

Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, transformers around Ikemeleng have been burning and people experiencing power cut due to that. Many people have bridged the breakers so they do not buy electricity.

When I interviewed some of the members of the community, they told me their electricity does not last because the people living in the new settlement does not buy electricity and they using theirs. So they opted to bridging the breakers as well.

On Saturday the 10th of July, other transformers burned and left people in the dark. The following day the municipality came in and try to fix the problem. They couldn’t fix it as it has to be replaced and the same transformer was replaced early this year because of the same problem. What I’ve realized is that the transformers are unable to feed the entire community with electricity. They need to be upgraded as the community has grown bigger than when electricity was installed