City Power has confirmed that one of their technicians who was kidnapped in Lenasia Ext 4, South of Joburg, has been found. The technician and his two colleagues had responded to a complaint about power failure in the community yesterday.

The utility spokesperson Isaac Mangena said a team of technicians were busy with operations on site when they were attacked by a group of armed criminals who hijacked their white bakkie and kidnapped one of the employees. Though Mangena confirmed that the kidnapped technician has been found, he did not give details. He said that the police were still searching for the bakkie that the employees were driving as well as the suspects. "We urge residents to alert authorities of criminal activity that may hinder service delivery," he said. Mangena said they have about 2 000 outages on average daily that their technicians have to attend to. "It gets difficult to make sure that each of these has a JMPD car escorting them, bearing in mind that the officers also have their own responsibilities," he said.

City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava said they are outraged by such a violent crime meted against their employees while executing their duties. "More than anything, we were deeply concerned about the safety of our employee who had been kidnapped by these criminals," Mashava said. She added that they are also conducting a safety assessment, to determine whether it's safe for their teams to continue working in that area. "We urge residents of Lenasia South Ext 4 and surrounding neighbourhoods to help in providing any information that could lead to the apprehension of the perpetrators," added Mashava.

She also said that while City Power has an option to request escorts from JMPD when going to the unsafe communities, it was unsustainable and costly and may affect our response times to outages in hostile and volatile areas. "We will not hesitate to pull out our teams from any area where their safety is compromised", concluded Mashava. She said that psychosocial support will be provided to the victims of the hijacking.