City Power employees robbed while on duty

City Power technicians were robbed of their valuables while working in Discovery in Roodepoort, on Monday.

Two men driving a white Datsun Go robbed the two female employees.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena condemned the incident. He said the two employees were traumatised and the entity has arranged for them to receive counselling.

“The constant attacks on our technicians are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

“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 services,” he said.

He said during this year City Power teams have been held at gunpoint, robbed of cellphones, laptops, and toolboxes, hijacked and injured while on duty and servicing communities.

“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 won’t hesitate to pull out our teams if their safety is compromised,” he said.

He added that in July, technicians had two vans hijacked while working in Lenasia.

“The cars were later found abandoned in Lawley and near Meriting Squatter Camp in Lenasia South. A case of hijacking and kidnapping was opened at the local police station.

“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.”

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