Residents of KZN municipality still in the dark, a week after substation explosion

• A substation exploded in Northdale last week.
• The Msunduzi municipality has been working to restore power, but says protesters have been intimidating staff.
• The DA said it would continue to put pressure on authorities to get the job done.

Residents of the Msunduzi municipality in KwaZulu-Natal could be without power on Christmas after little progress was made following a substation explosion.

The Northdale primary substation exploded in the early hours of Thursday morning last week.

Residents have since taken to the streets to demonstrate their frustration about the ongoing power outage.

During a media briefing on Wednesday, the municipality said some of the municipal staff working on repairing the power were intimidated by the protesters. 

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The municipality was working on restoring the power, but a time-frame for complete restoration could not be confirmed.

In an effort to resolve the issue, DA provincial leader Francois Rodgers met with the head of the cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) department."[Cogta] has now intervened and invoked an emergency procurement to get a team of engineers from Nersa, provincial government and Cogta on the ground in this disaster as the municipality clearly has no capacity," DA councillor Ross Strachan said.

"But we will continue to put pressure on authorities to ensure that we get some clear indication and some relief to the communities that are still in the dark."