RECENT STORMS COST EEC OVER E1 MILLION

MANZINI - The recent thunderstorms which affected a number of homes did not spare EEC as the company suffered damages wrorth over a million of Emalangeni.

This was revealed by Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC) Marketing and Corporate Communications Khaya Mavuso.
However, despite the damages, Mavuso assured the nation that since the rainy season had arrived, the company had adequate stock levels to cater for this period, which includes the festive season.

He said EEC was aware of the approaching rainy season, which was usually accompanied by ferocious wind and lightning.
“We have adequate stock levels to cater for this period, mainly in transformers, electricity conductors, poles, meters, lightning arrestors, fuses and insulators, among other power supply materials,” he said. 

He said the tricky part with natural disasters was that they could not predict when they would take place or their severity and extent of damage they would cause.

On that note, he said over the past few months, they had performed planned maintenance on the electricity network countrywide and further placed remedial measures to avoid long outages during severe storms.

Reality

However, he said the reality was that there was no amount of planning that would prevent a natural disaster, hence some customers might eventually experience extended power outages, mainly during the coming rainy season.

He said during such abnormal situations, they would give priority to customers who already had electricity.
“This is to say, services for quotations and new connections are normally suspended until the situation has normalised,” he clarified. 

Explaining

When explaining about the recent thunderstorms, which started last Friday, Mavuso said areas which were hit the hardest included Manzini, Matsapha and Siteki.

He said the thunderstorms destroyed conductors, poles, structures, transformers and faulty Customer Interface Units (meters).
In Matsapha alone, he said they replaced an 800kVA transformer which cost around E200 000.

Again, he said over 20 other smaller transformers were replaced within the said areas together with about 100 faulty electricity metres. 
Following the power outages, which were experienced at the affected areas, he said the company would like to extend an apology to its customers.

Damage

He said this was a result of the extent of damage suffered since last weekend’s storm.
He added that because of the nature of the damage, customers within this aforementioned corridor had experienced extended power outages. 
He said their technicians had been working tirelessly to restore electricity for the affected areas.

Mavuso said they managed to reduce the number of power outages by three quarters since the thunderstorms.
He then assured their customers that they would be assisted.

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