Pretoria - The lives of City of Tshwane workers from the energy and electricity department have been under threat from residents who chase them away to prevent them from disconnecting their illegal power connections.
This was the concern raised by the department’s senior officials during their interactions with the municipal public accounts committee at Tshwane House on Friday.
The committee had called officials to respond to the issues arising from the report regarding the city’s indigent policy programme and the installation of prepaid meters to customers.
Committee members, led by chairperson Kholofelo Morodi, questioned the officials about the steps taken to deal with the challenges.
Department acting group head Frans Manganye said the municipality was grappling with illegal connections . Often, workers faced “threats and intimidation” when they were dispatched to conduct audits on customers’ illegal power installations.
To deal with “harassment”, Manganye said, the department “normally withdraws from the site for the sake of employees and we normally protect the infrastructure of the City, especially the vehicle so as not to be damaged through stoning”.
Where possible, the department would work with the metro police and SAPS before going back to the areas to execute their duties accompanied by law-enforcement.
He said the department employees had also been intimidated by customers who refused to have prepaid meters installed.
“We then activate credit control activities to make sure that where we find illegality, we enforce either removal of the cable or removal of the connection.”
Manganye said the audit entailed investigating the buying pattern of a customer or indigent connected to the system to determine if the connection was illegal. Through the audit, the department could determine if the electricity metre was faulty or the customer had illegally connected to the system.
Pretoria News