City Power’s 65 contractors not on strike

City Power has noted the misleading information from an unknown association claiming it is leading a go-slow on behalf of subcontractors.

Their spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, said, “We reiterate that the entity has no knowledge of the association that is continuing to cause alarm with these false claims and has gone as far as sending threatening messages to the contractors who are at work. We have requested the police to follow through on these threats and ensure those behind them are arrested and prosecuted.

“As far as City Power is concerned, there is no protest from any of its recognised contractors, and operations have proceeded unimpeded since April 8, the day tools were supposed to be down.

“For the record, City Power has 65 contractors to provide added support in managing infrastructure repairs and maintenance. All of those contractors have not embarked on any form of protest, and any grievance from them goes through the agreed channels. As a matter of fact, we meet often with the contractors to talk about any issues that might disturb their work or City Power operations,” he said.

“These contractors, along with more than 300 internal technicians and operators, are hard at work responding to outages as usual.

“However, in light of these claims, which we believe could have been sparked by the entity’s decision to probe and audit all service providers in relation to falsified invoices among other things, we will have a pre-planned meeting with the 65 contractors.

“We wll discuss any challenges they might be encountering regarding this audit and any other problems they might have with paying their subcontractors. City Power remains committed to stepping in and intervening in any issues between our contractors and their subcontractors to ensure smooth working relations and that no operations are interrupted.

“City Power has beefed up security to safeguard its employees and contractors if the purported strike disrupts our operations and threatens lives and property.

“The purported downing of tools will not deter the utility from proceeding with its plans to root out any fraud, corruption and poor workmanship elements from service providers, which we encounter in the form of complaints we get from customers and councillors,” said Mangena.