The Free State town went dark on Tuesday evening after a breaker fault at the same substation became engulfed in flames, damaging the substation’s control room in the process. Eskom spokesperson in the province, Stefanie Janse van Rensburg, says Eskom’s technical team worked tirelessly to restore power, managing to do so just before 19:00 on Friday evening.  

Ngwathe Local Municipality spokesperson, Steve Naale told OFM News, on Friday evening that some of the areas in Parys and Tumahole township continued without electricity further into the night, but all is resolved as of Saturday. Naale further revealed residents have been illegally tampering with mini municipal substations, cautioning that this is dangerous. Van Rensburg on the other end says the power utility in investigating the cause of the fault.  

The municipality has not commented further on the water situation in the area. Naale told OFM News water tankers are being distributed in the town to ensure there is water available, When the Free State town went dark on Tuesday the infrastructure that distributes domestic water into homes was also affected, resulting in no water.  

This further compounded the town’s ongoing water quality issues. Ngwathe roped in Sedibeng Water in an effort to intensify efforts to sort out the issues at the Parys water treatment plant. Parys is the lesser known casualty of the Vaal River crisis. The town is located downstream where pollution is likely to gather. Save the Vaal told OFM News previously that the embattled Emfuleni Local Municipality in Gauteng - seen as the main offender in the crisis- receives their domestic water from the Vaal Dam which then undergoes extensive treatment by Rand Water. Ngwathe, however specifically Parys receives their domestic from the polluted river and due to  the challenges at the treatment plant, the municipality struggles to purify the water to the required standards.  


OFM News