Africa-Press – South-Africa. The City of Tshwane electricity unit has resumed work in Mamelodi East after being threatened and forced to illegally switch off power in a neighbouring suburb.
On Tuesday, workers from the City were in Mamelodi when a group of residents held them hostage.
According to City spokesperson Selby Bokaba, residents were angry after there was a 132kv trip at the Mamelodi 2 substation. The trip occurred just after load shedding because of the grid being overloaded, Bokaba said.
“Teams were on site attending to a service interruption when some community members that are serviced by the Mamelodi Hinterland Substation held the City’s System Operators hostage and forced them to switch off electricity at Nellmapius Ext 22 and 24. The petrified officials had no choice but… to comply for safety reasons.”
War vets hostage drama: Makwetla baffled as NPA drops charges after ‘ANC brokered deal’
Tshwane Metro Police Department officers who came to the workers’ rescue were also allegedly chased away.
“A decision was taken to hastily withdraw all the teams from sites in Mamelodi for safety reasons, to prevent the community from forcing them to perform further illegal operations,” Bokaba said.
After a meeting with local councillors on Wednesday, the City agreed the workers could go back to the area.
“A decision was taken to resume duties following an undertaking from the councillors that they would engage their communities and encourage them to refrain from interfering with the City’s operational teams and to stop intimidating city employees.”
Bokaba added that City workers were increasingly being targeted in areas like Nellmapius and in parts of Soshanguve and Mamelodi.
Case against military vets who allegedly held ministers hostage withdrawn
“Service interruptions relating to water and electricity occur from time to time due to a slew of factors, such as theft of cables, vandalism of infrastructure and illegal connection. The daily load shedding imposed by power utility Eskom has compounded the problem, as the fragile electricity infrastructure is not designed to be switched on and off frequently.””
In March, an electrician was held hostage and assaulted while fixing a five-day power outage in Soshanguve caused by cable theft. At the time, Bokaba said, the man was the 11th electrician to be attacked in Soshanguve since January.
Two weeks ago, Chicco Twala was released on R2 000 bail after allegedly pointing a gun at a City Power employee. The employee was outside Twala’s Johannesburg recording studio to repair a fault, which caused a power outage when the music mogul allegedly assaulted him.
For More News And Analysis About South-Africa Follow Africa-Press
