City Power condemns violent attack on its contractor

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City Power has condemned violent attack on its contractor in Alexandra.

This comes after a contractor was attacked and badly assaulted by a group of people on Tuesday, while on duty repairing a faulty cable that caused an outage in the area.

The power provider said its team was ambushed on corner Ruth and 13th Avenue, by a mob of angry residents.

It further revealed that the group pelted stones, injuring one of the contractors and landing him in hospital. Although other technicians managed to escape unharmed, but their tool-boxes were stolen in the process.

According to City Power’s chief executive officer, Tshifularo Mashava, cables and joints that were going to be used for the repairs were also taken.

Mashava confirmed that a case has been reported to the police and they were forced to immediately pull out all of its resources from the township over safety concerns.

“By this morning only skeletal service was provided as the technicians are scared to respond to Alexandra outages.

“We strongly condemn these violent attacks on our contractors and technicians who were assigned
to address the very same outage concern that residents are complaining about.

City Power withdraws employees over safety concerns

“It’s deeply disappointing that our attempts to restore supply were met with such brute violence,” Mashava remarked.

She emphasised that City Power will not hesitate to permanently withdraw its employees and
contractors from areas where their safety is compromised.

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“We urge councillors and community leaders in the area to speak to their fellow residents to refrain from such counterproductive acts, because if this continues unabated, we will be left with no choice but to completely halt our services in order to protect lives,” the CEO added.

Mashava stated that they will be engaging the community leadership and councillors to express their concerns and request intervention.