Johannesburg - The Electoral Commission IEC has confirmed that operations are back to normal after people at the National Results Operation Centre (ROC) in Tshwane had to be evacuated last night due to a power outage.
According to the Tshwane Emergency Services, an electrical fault led to the evacuation at the centre.
The outage, it said, affected communications including a scheduled broadcast of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) which had to broadcast in Auckland Park.
“Operations are back to normal at the national ROC, all centres were open and by the time we left the centre quite late in the evening, there were no signs of any damage or anything. This morning we are fully operational and we are back at work,” IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela said.
Initially, there were reports that a generator caught fire and a transformer substation blew up but later the commission said it was an electrical fault.
“It was an electrical fault; there was no fire in the centre because it took quite a while when we were informed of the situation. We evacuated to ensure safety for all. IEC is confident that this will not happen, we are in communication with Tshwane and Eskom and they have both committed not to have further problems. We remain very committed to availability to South Africans who require any information,” Bapela said.
Power utility Eskom on Friday suspended all load shedding after implementing stage 4 this week.
Today is the last day for the special vote.
There are reports that some elderly citizens from Mabopane in Tshwane are unable to vote because their information was registered under another ward.
This means that if they still want to vote, they will have to join long queues together with millions of other South Africans to cast their vote tomorrow.
Yesterday the Commission announced that there were few incidents that occurred that affected operations in various voting stations across the country.
These included protests, bad weather that blew away voting tents and last-minute cancellation of lease agreements with voting areas.
ntombi.nkosi@inl.co.za
Political Bureau