An emergency work stoppage occurred when metro workers were digging a trench in First Avenue, CBD, to fix an electrical cable.
However, these workers were performing their duty without a way leave.
According to the Occupational Health and Safety Act, anybody who carries out work is expected to have a way leave.
The reason is to prevent anybody from being injured or killed and to prevent disruption to essential services such as electricity, gas, water or telephones.
Their work was interrupted when a Telkom worker stopped to inspect a Telkom cable.
The Telkom employee, Sean Wallace, says he asked the workers for their way leave, which they should always have on site, but they did not have one.
Wallace phoned his superiors to report the issue.
“A conduit covering one of the pipes had already been damaged by the workers,” he says.
He claims all institutions have the right to stop work should it damage their services.
Metro spokesperson Themba Gadebe says the interruption occurred when workers were digging a trench to change an electricity supply cable.
“As a result, technicians had to work around the clock to restore power supply to the affected customers,” he says.
The metro did not comment on how long the interruption would last and when work would resume.
