Durban residents have been left without phone, fax and Internet lines after Telkom's phone networks were sabotaged during recent pay strikes.
The strike was resolved last week, with workers accepting a 7.5 percent general salary increase and a two-year moratorium on forced retrenchments but for many residents and business owners the effects of the strike are still being felt.
Mount Edgecombe resident Maureen Forbes said she and other residents had been without phone lines since last week.
She said after enquiring they were told the lines had been deliberately vandalised. Some lines were crossed.
Forbes's phone was ringing in somebody else's home and her fax line had been crossed with a fax line from a business in the nearby business park.
"People are using my ADSL (Internet) and my telephone and Telkom is doing nothing about it," she said.
Telkom said there were at least 17 acts of sabotage and vandalism with 15 of these in KwaZulu-Natal.
"An investigation is currently under way to determine the cause of the damage. Early indications are that this may have been the work of vandals," says Nombulelo Moholi, managing director of Telkom SA.
Telkom spokesman Pynee Chetty said any liability for loss of business was a matter of their customers' own risk.
It was also inconclusive that it was striking Telkom workers who had vandalised the network but Chetty said the conclusion of the investigation would reveal who was responsible.
Telkom urges the public and its staff to remain vigilant and to report any suspicious behaviour with regard to Telkom's infrastructure to TARPS's National Security Control Centre at 0800 041 041.