River Park without electricity after clash with City Power technicians
River Park residents spend days without electricity after City Power cut off the supply to the whole area, citing continued interference with lawful operations.
City Power cut off the electricity supply to River Park in Alexandra, plunging the entire community into darkness.
This comes after community members resisted City Power’s scheduled meter audit and disconnection operation in the area on May 28.
Read more: River Park residents resist City Powers cut-off operation
The utility’s spokesperson Isaac Mangena said that their cut-off operation, which was held in collaboration with the police, JMPD and contracted security personnel, targeted 470 households with zero recorded electricity purchases, and 367 customers with low vending patterns, ‘indicative of meter tampering.’ However, their scheduled operation was met with resistance when angry residents staged a protest, threatening and nearly holding their team hostage. Mangena noted that as tensions escalated, they had to swiftly withdraw the operation and resorted to disconnecting the whole area.
“We have repeatedly cautioned River Park residents that continued defiance, interference, and resistance to lawful operations would result in a total supply disconnection,” he said. “However, those warnings have been met with contempt. Today’s actions have forced us to act decisively.”
Mangena said it was not the first time River Park residents had acted ‘unlawfully and aggressively.’ He added it occurred on May 28, when residents staged a protest at the Alexandra Service Delivery Centre after the utility disconnected nine properties found to have connected illegally to the grid. He said that earlier this year, individuals masquerading as community representatives had violently disrupted their smart meter rollout operation.
Also read: City Power plans to give 5 Alexandra informal settlements formal access to electricity
In their defence, residents argued that they were resisting the utility’s operation because City Power did not tell them about its plan to disconnect their electricity. They also stressed that City Power was in breach of the agreement they had on May 28, that the utility would not cut off their electricity at least until June 9, when City Power technicians come to normalise the meters in the area.
City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava said that the utility had a contractual relationship with verified individual account holders, not a group of people who they couldn’t ascertain if they were customers or not. “We urge those registered customers who have been affected by the power supply cut-off to visit our SDC on an individual basis so that we can resolve their queries separately. All others will remain disconnected until they allow us to audit and normalise meters in the area,” she noted.
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