Africa-Press – South-Africa. City Power officials are undeterred in their threats to disconnect all hijacked buildings in Johannesburg after their officials were met with violence at one of the identified structures on Wednesday.
Spokesperson Isaac Mangena said they were conducting an operation targeting three hijacked buildings in Doornfontein and Jeppestown when occupants of one of the hijacked buildings attacked them.
Two of the buildings are situated in one street in Jeppestown.
The operation was part of the municipality’s threat to reclaim all hijacked buildings.
The operation follows the death of 77 people in a fire at the hijacked Usindiso building in Marshalltown two weeks ago.
Mangena said their operations were aimed at cracking down hard on all hijacked buildings, which are owned by the municipality, government, private individuals and companies.
Most of those buildings are in Doornfontein, Jeppestown, Malvern, Kensington, Johannesburg CBD and neighbouring suburbs.
“The last payment we received from the three buildings we planned to raid in Doornfontein and Jeppestown was … 10 years ago. We are not generating revenue from any hijacked buildings,” Mangena said.
“We decided to remove our infrastructure from those hijacked buildings. We are playing our part in ensuring these buildings are safe. We have identified several such buildings.
“We had to abandon our operation because of the volatile situation. Our safety and those that we had invited are essential. We have temporarily abandoned our plan as tenants threatened us and became volatile. We are returning to those buildings very soon with more manpower,” Mangena said.
The three buildings owe City Power a combined R13 million.
Mangena said they would not recover the money owed to them by illegal occupants if they didn’t cut off electricity.
“These are challenges we face daily. Our technician was stoned last year in Hillbrow. The technician spent a month in the ICU. Our teams are attacked and often hijacked and robbed when conducting such operations.
“Our company will go under if we don’t conduct such operations. We need a joint operation to fight hijacked buildings,” Mangena said.
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