Durban – A power outage that left hundreds of thousands of people in the dark for five days has residents and business owners in uMlazi fuming.
Angry residents took to the streets on Tuesday and burnt tyres on Mangosuthu Highway in the township after city engineers and electricians could not restore power.
The city said the outage was caused by an explosion at the uMlazi major substation.
The outages affected seven sections of the township.
Electricity was restored to the area on Wednesday – more than five days after it went out.
Speaking to the Daily News, Joseph Kweyama, owner of Mnembe store in A-section, said residents were angry.
“The power went off on Friday morning. A lot of things have been damaged and I have been losing customers since Friday,” he said.
Kweyama said he lost stock to the value of R15 000 because of the power outage.
Thandiwe Zikalala, 60, also of A-section, said: “It happened just after pay day and people had just bought groceries, which had to go to waste.”