Two Joburg City Power technicians have been robbed of their valuables while on duty in Discovery, Roodepoort.
City Power has condemned the incident, saying the two female officials had reported the case to the SA Police Services after they were robbed of their valuables while on duty in Wemmer Street.
City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena said the two women were robbed by two men who were driving a white Datsun Go vehicle with the registration number HN94YK GP.
“The constant attacks on our technicians are unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Mangena said.
“The work that our technicians do is an 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,” he said.
“This year alone our teams have been 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.”
He said it was patently unfair and “outrageous that our employees must constantly look over their shoulders when on duty, out of fear of being attacked by criminals”.
He warned Joburg communities that the targeting of City Power officials could impact negatively on service in areas deemed “high-risk” as they would not “hesitate to pull out our teams if their safety is compromised”.
Communities have been warned that if necessary, City Power would not venture into so-called high risk areas without an escort from the Joburg Metro Police, which would cause significant delays for residents and would be at an expense to ratepayers.
“This is unsustainable and costly and may affect our response times to outages in hostile areas,” said Mangena.
Earlier this year, in July, two City Power vans were hijacked in the Lawley area near Lenasia and a case of hijacking and kidnapping was opened with the police.
“We are pleading with communities to help us and rally around our employees as they try to ensure that City Power continues to render electricity services to communities and attend to calls,” said Mangena, who added that the affected employees had been left traumatised by the incident.
IOL