Joburg’s inner city, Alexandra, Lenasia, Roodeport and Soshanguve.

These are Gauteng’s most dangerous areas for public technicians to work at.

So prevalent are attacks on municipal technicians that the City of Joburg had to hire private security and request metro police to escort its staff when attending to call outs, further delaying response times for communities waiting for help.

Tshwane said technicians feared for their lives and refused to go out on call without a police escort, which delayed response time. 

Ekurhuleni said these attacks were prevalent in open spaces, industrial areas, after hours, near hostels and in informal settlements.

“It’s unbearable for the electricity teams to execute their duties in that area [Jukulyn],” said Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba.

He said in the latest incident on Tuesday, electricians were assigned to repair a cable at Soshanguve’s Block X’s substation but were forced to abandon their mission after community members pelted their vehicle with stones.

“This is another form of criminality that officials/teams get subjected to. Recently, teams were held hostage in the Jukulyn area,” said Bokaba.

“If they’re not robbed of their valuables or hijacked, they get harassed, abducted or even threatened by the same communities they are meant to take services to. Colleagues get robbed of... wallets, mobile phones, money, wrist watches... Criminality of this nature is rife but located in specific areas only.

“It’s a permanent feature though in Jukulyn. Thugs prey on our officials when they’re performing their duties. We’ve had one or two incidents of this nature in Nellmapius, east of the city,” said Bokaba.

Joburg’s City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said employees reported cases of intimidation, assault and robbery in various parts of the city almost every month.

Areas where zama zamas operate are also identified as danger zones.

“This problem is deeply troubling because this year alone, our various 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 across Johannesburg,” said Mangena.

Two female officials were in October robbed at gunpoint while on duty in Roodepoort, while in July, three officials were also attacked in Lenasia while responding to a faulty meter problem, he said.

“The two vehicles they [team in Lenasia] were travelling in were also hijacked during that unfortunate incident. Those cars were later found abandoned in Lawley, near the Meriting Squatter Camp in Lenasia South.

“Last year, in Alexandra, various teams were attacked and robbed of their belongings. During that period, a team of technicians were also hijacked at gunpoint in Far East Bank [in Alexandra].”

He described as harrowing an incident reported in November 2022 where a 53-year official spent over a month fighting for his life in intensive care after being hit several times with stones and sharp objects during a cut off operation in Hillbrow.

“One of the victims of these violent attacks told City Power that in the past, the only thing they used to worry about was staying safe from being harmed by the electricity. Now, however, she says their daily prayer is about returning to their homes at the end of a workday, without being attacked or possibly killed by criminals.

“This paints a picture of not only the impact of the crime on service delivery, but also on the psychological wellbeing of our staff. It’s still unclear how many criminals have been arrested so far for these crimes, but cases have been opened with the SA Police Service. We will be following up with SAPS on the status of those ongoing investigations,” Mangena said.

City of Ekurhuleni spokesperson Zweli Dlamini said these attacks were generally committed by opportunistic thugs.

“Not too long ago one official was shot and injured while attending to a power outage in Boksburg. Our hotspot areas are the low payment areas with a large number of illegal connections. Often, after a removal of illegal connection operation our technicians are threatened with violence. Crime is also opportunistic and can occur any time of day or night. Attacks can range from assault to armed robbery and attempted murder,” said Dlamini.

“Our teams are vulnerable when they leave a vehicle and have to concentrate on fault finding and are therefore easily targeted by criminals.

“No single area can be identified as a hotspot, the incident in Boksburg where a technician was shot and robbed, occurred at a switching station along a main road in a suburb,” he said.

sibanyonim@sowetan.co.za