Windhoek endures a two-hour power outage

A POWER outage that lasted for more than an hour brought business in Windhoek to a standstill yesterday afternoon.

NamPower spokesperson Tangeni Kambangula yesterday said the outage happened at 12h56 until 14h14 when power was restored.

While power supplies to Windhoek were restored by 14h14, the outskirts and surrounding areas, including places like Finkenstein and Hoffnung, had to wait longer before power was restored.

Kambangula said a broken conductor at the Hoffnung sub-station, about 18 kilometres outside Windhoek, had caused power to trip at the Van Eck sub-station.

The outage caught many people unawares when banks went offline, and some shops had to close briefly.

Some ATMs also went offline for the duration of the outage because the banks did not have power back-up.

While FNB Namibia and Standard Bank were unreachable for comment, Bank Windhoek head of corporate affairs Hayley Allen said they minimised the effects of the outage as they have back-up generators.

“Our branches have back-up generators for eventualities such as the one experienced this afternoon, which kick in as soon as the power supply is interrupted. Our clients would have experienced only minimal inconvenience for a short period,” said Allen.

As if the outage was not enough, motorists endured negotiating congested roads, especially at the robot-controlled intersections, without the help of the Windhoek City Police traffic section to direct traffic.

Windhoek City Police divisional head of the traffic management unit Adam Eiseb yesterday said the police indeed sent through a team of traffic officers to ease traffic flow within the central business district, and at other busy roads. He added that there were not enough traffic officers to send around to all areas as traffic officers work shifts, but luckily no accidents were reported during that period.

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