THE CITY of Tshwane has condemned the intimidation of its officials in Mamelodi East on Tuesday, 17 May.
It is alleged that the city’s officials were held hostage on Tuesday evening by some community members who forced them to go and disconnect electricity at another suburb. City of Tshwane’s Divisional Head: Strategic Communication, Selby Bokaba, said the community was angry following a 132kv trip at the Mamelodi 2 Substation after loadshedding due to an overload on the grid.
He said the teams were on site attending to a service interruption when some community members that are serviced by the Mamelodi Hinterland Substation held them hostage.
They forced them to switch off electricity at Nellmapius Extension 22 and 24.
“The terrified officials had no choice but to comply for safety reasons.
“Officials from the Tshwane Metro Police Department were summoned to assist but were also chased away by the community.
“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.
“The situation remains tense and the traumatised officials are reluctant to go out and attend to service interruptions in Extension 6 and 10, specifically, out of fear of being kidnapped or harmed,” he said.
“The city strongly condemns the criminal behaviour by certain communities.
“The perpetrators of these despicable behaviour should know the consequences of their actions as those officials would simply refuse to go and service those communities in the event of a service interruption,” he added.
He said the harassment and robbery of officials while on duty has been experienced in Nellmapius, some parts of Soshanguve, and now some sections of Mamelodi.
He said that service interruptions relating to water and electricity occur from time to time due to a number of factors such as cable theft, vandalism of infrastructure and illegal connections.
“The daily loadshedding imposed by the power utility, Eskom, has compounded the problem as the fragile electricity infrastructure is not designed to be switched on and off frequently,” said Bokaba.
He said that a meeting was scheduled yesterday afternoon between the city officials and councillors in the affected areas with a view to finding an amicable solution that would lead to the officials resuming duties in an environment that is not characterised by fear, threats or intimidation.
