The City of Cape Town’s service delivery to residents continues to be impacted when attacks and intimidation on City electricity staff and contractors occur while on duty. Security details have been appointed as far as our resources allow, to accompany staff and contractors in some areas to enable repair work to be completed.
The City has experienced an increase of attacks on electricity staff and contractors while on duty in recent months. While the City’s Electricity Generation and Distribution Department remains committed to providing service to communities across the metro, the safety of our staff and contractors remains of utmost consideration.
‘The continued attacks and intimidation of City electricity staff and contractors while providing service to communities are unacceptable and criminal. We appeal to residents to assist the City by reporting the perpetrators to the South African Police Service (SAPS). We simply cannot allow criminals to continue with these actions in our communities.
‘These actions have an immense impact on the service delivery to our residents. One can often see the impact with prolonged outages in certain areas of the metro. The traumatic incidents often result in staff withdrawing from the area for their personal safety or taking sick leave as a result of post-traumatic stress and therefore reducing the staff capacity available to work. This of course has a ripple effect on service delivery.
‘Violent attacks on staff, stoning of both personnel and vehicles, and an increased trend in City vehicle hijacking in general in some areas as well as the impact of illegal connections, theft and vandalism of infrastructure continue to hamper service delivery,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy and Climate Change, Councillor Phindile Maxiti.
Source: City Of Cape Town