Alex residents expect no electricity after City Power pulls out

Residents in some parts of Alexandra are expected to be without power for longer after City Power pulled out its services from the area following a brutal attack on their contractor that landed him in hospital.

The team was in the area on Tuesday to repair a faulty cable when they were pelted by rocks by the community.

The residents had been without power for two days and had logged in a call to have electricity restored.

However, it was while City Power contractors were fixing the cable that angry residents accused them of taking long to repair it then attacked them.

Two people have since been arrested for the attack.

The incident has resulted in the power utility pulling out of the area.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said said a team of six contractors were repairing the faulty cable that had caused an outage in the area when they were ambushed by a mob of angry residents who pelted them with stones.

“Other technicians managed to escape unharmed, but their toolboxes were stolen in the process. Cables and joints that were going to be used for the repairs were also taken.

“A case has been reported to the police and two people have been arrested. City Power was forced to immediately pull out all of its resources from the township over safety concerns,” said Mangena. 

Mangena said by Wednesday morning only skeletal services were provided as their technicians were scared to respond to Alexandra outages. 

City Power CEO, Tshifularo Mashava said it was deeply disappointing that their attempts to restore supply were met with “such brute violence”.

She said the entity would not hesitate to permanently withdraw its employees and contractors from areas where safety is a concern.

“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 ," Mashava. 

“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. We will be engaging the community leadership and councillors to express our concerns and request their intervention.”

Mangena said they had been experiencing capacity challenges in Alex township due to multiple faults and overloading of the network as a result of power demand. 

“This risky situation has forced us to embark on load rotation to alleviate the pressures on the system. The Twentieth Avenue distributor has been off due to multiple cable faults,” said Mangena. 

He said the outage was affecting customers in Alexandra from 12th Avenue to 20th Avenue between Roosevelt and Hofmeyer Streets.

“The outage will remain prolonged due to disruptions encountered on Tuesday during the vicious onslaught on our contractors. City Power will only allow its full complement of employees and contractors to return to the site when it deems it safe,” said Mangena. 

Meanwhile, residents of Setswetla informal settlement – also in Alexander – embarked on a protest from Wednesday night until Thursday morning over not having power since Sunday.

Johannesburg Metro Police Department spokesperson, Xolani Fihla said they had responded to calls this morning that the protest had flared up once again.

“When we got there we found that residents had blocked the roads with tyres and were protesting but after some time we managed to get the roads opened again. And they are in conversations with their community leaders and City Power has been called to the area,” said Fihla.

Mangena said their technicians were on the ground in Setswetla responding to a power outage.