Everson Luhanga
Alexandra has been a tough zone for City Power to work in.
There has been a series of serious attacks on technicians and security officials this year alone.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena has confirmed to Scrollla.Africa that they have already decided against responding to outage calls from certain areas in the township at night due to the threats and safety concerns for their workers.
“We will not hesitate to pull our teams out completely if the threats increase in Alexandra continue,” said Mangena.
Mangena said they have recently seen a spike in attacks that include robberies at gunpoint and assaults on their officials.
“Some of these attacks are suspected to be linked to the recent crime wave in the township,” said Mangena.
Mangena described some of the attacks on the officials who are trying to ease the burden of power outages in the overpopulated township where power is in high demand.
On 1 July, contractors were robbed at gunpoint at around 11 am. The contractor was working at 9th Avenue between Joe Nhlahla and Hoffmeyer streets. The team’s cell phones were taken from them at gunpoint.
The community intervened and the stolen property was returned later but the suspects escaped.
On the same day there were two attempted robberies where a contractor had a firearm pointed at him while working. Fortunately, their belongings weren’t taken.
Mangena said on 16 July at around 3pm contractors were working on site when some community members came and forcefully took away their stepladder. This meant the work had to stop.
On 14 March, a team was robbed of their phones at gunpoint around 4th Avenue.
On 11 May, City Power officials were hijacked and robbed of phones at Far East bank in the township. “The bakkie was later found on the same day by the police, but the phones and cables were never recovered,” he said.
Mangena said these incidents make it difficult for City Power to service the community, and some outages are prolonged unnecessarily.
“We appeal to the community to desist from threatening our workers and to support and protect them,” he said.
One of the leaders of Alexandra, Vincent Ndima said the attacks on City Power officials is unacceptable and they are working with police to find solutions to these attacks.
Image source: @BusinessLIVE
