City Power wants police escorts as gunmen terrorise technicians underground

City Power will no longer send its technicians to do repair work underground the Joburg CBD without police escort following violent confrontations with armed cable thieves.

At least five encounters have been reported since the beginning of the year between maintenance teams and gun-wielding thugs, with the latest confrontation over the weekend leaving two people dead, according to City Power.

On Saturday, City Power technicians went underground to restore power to parts of the city centre after an outage affecting a block that includes Bank City, JCI building and Southern Sun, when they encountered gunmen and a shootout ensued. This has resulted in a delay in restoration of power, with some businesses and residents saying they’ve been left in the dark for up to six days.

Delays in restoring power has hit businesses in the pocket as result of lost revenue as well as additional cost to provide alternative power to keep operations running.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said they approached Gauteng police on Monday to provide escorts for the technicians conducting underground repairs. He said two cable thieves were shot dead and one City Power employee was receiving medical care .

“It’s war underground,” Mangena said.

“The situation has heightened and it seems to be a well-coordinated onslaught which is well-resourced because these people are heavily armed and dangerous,” he said.

Yesterday, some businesses and residential buildings were still in the dark.

A manager at McDonald’s in the CBD said the outages were costing the franchise. “Business-wise, it is costing us a lot because we are refilling diesel every day to run the business.

“We have spent R24,000 in just five days. So it’s quite a lot of money. We haven’t had power since Wednesday last week. We don’t know what is happening and when the situation will be resolved. We are losing money.”

Thobile Tsotetsi, who lives in the CBD, said she too was also struggling without power. The mother of three said she had to send two of her children home in Braamfisherville, Soweto, because there was no hot water and she had to spend money on fast food.

“It’s been hectic. We have to eat fast food, we really don’t have a choice so that means I have to take out money every day. We are resorting to expenses that we did not plan for, ” she said.

At Tekkie Town on Pritchard Street, the manager said some customers did not want to enter the store because it was dark. “We are losing customers because customers do not want to shop when it is dark.

“Some feel like their shopping experience is bad. In terms of paying tender taps, it doesn’t work when we don’t have power.”

The manager said the store has no generator and the inverter ran out on the second day of the blackout.

Mangena said police should deal with scrapyards that continue to buy copper received illegally.

”We want the police to deal with the scrapyards that are stealing copper cables. We deal with common criminals but police need to deal with the big fish ...then we will start seeing a reduction in terms of this crime.

“What I can tell you is that we are losing millions because of the amount of cables that we have to replace every time they get stolen and these are high voltage cables which are very expensive,” Mangena said.

He said criminals use tunnels and sewage holes to gain access to underground infrastructure.

Provincial police spokesperson Col Mawela Masondo said he was aware that there had been several incidents of City Power technicians being ambushed by criminals underground.

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