Johannesburg - Joburg MMC for the Department of Environment and Infrastructure Services, Michael Sun, has announced that Joburg mayor Mpho Phalatse has, on behalf of City Power, submitted an urgent request to Eskom for exclusion from load shedding for 72 hours.
According to Sun, this will allow City Power to work on power lines and infrastructure.
"It is a simple fact that power lines and infrastructure can be worked on when there is no power, and cable theft increases exponentially during blackouts. Accordingly, the executive mayor, councillor Mpho Phalatse, has on behalf of City Power submitted an urgent request to Eskom for exclusion from load shedding for a period of 72 hours to clear the current and increasing backlog," said Sun.
He said there was an urgent need for City Power to attend to the widespread and escalating faults. The entity has expressed its concern that load shedding is not only causing additional faults and stress on the network, but also preventing the entity from being able to effectively attend to the outages and stabilise the situation.
“While we are fully out to doing our utmost best to restore the outages and the City’s councillors are doing their best to assist the residents, thugs see our technicians as easy targets. Yesterday, four City Power technicians were held at gunpoint, assaulted and robbed by six men in Jeppestown while in full view of community members standing by.
“Threats and intimidation of technicians are reported daily. We are appealing to all Joburgers to help us keep our workers safe so we can get through this crisis together,” said Sun.
The Star