City Power has confirmed the arrest of two suspects linked to the assault of their technicians earlier this week. The team of technicians were deployed to restore power in Alexandra township in the north-east of Johannesburg. They were also robbed of their toolboxes and equipment.

MAKING IT HARD TO WORK

City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, said the attack of their technicians makes it difficult to provide services in certain areas. "We are hoping that the rest of those criminals who stole our cables, our joints and even our toolboxes are arrested and brought to book and taught a lesson that municipal workers are not to be attacked because they're there to provide services to residence that need it."

ATTACKS HINDER PROGRESS

The team which was attacked was responding to a power outage on Tuesday when they found residents protesting. The community allowed the technicians to go in and while they were busy with their work, they pelted them with stones. One of the technicians was admitted to hospital after the attack. Mangena said other technicians managed to escape unharmed while the injured remains in hospital. "City Power was forced to immediately pull out all of its resources from the township over safety concerns. Only skeletal service was provided as the technicians are scared to respond to Alexandra outages. We strongly condemn these violent attacks on our contractors and technicians who were assigned to address the very same outage that residents are complaining about. It's deeply disappointing that our attempts to restore supply were met with such brute violence," said City Power CEO, Tshifularo Mashava. She emphasised that City Power will not hesitate to permanently withdraw its employees and contractors from areas where their safety is compromised.