City Power condemns attack on its employees in Roodepoort

Stock , Sub station, City Power , Eskom, electrical. Picture: Timothy Bernard African news Agency

Stock , Sub station, City Power , Eskom, electrical. Picture: Timothy Bernard African news Agency

Published Oct 17, 2023

Share

City Power has condemned the attack on its staffers, which allegedly happened on Wemmer Street in Roodepoort on Monday afternoon.

It is reported that two female employees were robbed by two males driving a white Datsun Go vehicle.

This is not the first time this year that such an incident happened.

In July, three City Power technicians were hijacked while on duty in Lenasia South. These employees managed to flee to the nearest police station.

This incident happened while a crew of one man and two women were answering a call from a customer about a faulty meter when they were attacked.

With the latest incident, City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said they have since reported the matter to the police, adding that City Power has seen an increase in similar incidents and attacks against its employees.

“The constant attacks on our technicians are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. The work that our technicians do is important service to our communities, and they work tirelessly daily to ensure that residents have access to electricity, either by attending to unplanned outage calls, essential maintenance work or auditing meters, to name a few,” Mangena said.

Mangena added that this year has been bad for City Power officials, who have been held at gunpoint, robbed and had their equipment taken from them.

“This year alone, our team have held at gunpoint, robbed of cellphones, laptops, toolboxes, hijacked and injured, to the point of hospitalisation - all while on duty and servicing communities in Johannesburg.

“It is unfair and outrageous that our employees must constantly look over their shoulders when on duty out of fear of being attacked by criminals. As a result, this could have a negative impact on our operations in high-risk areas as these types of incidents will not enable us to attend to outage calls, and we will not hesitate to pull our teams if their safety is compromised,” he said.