City Power has hit back at claims that a contractors’ strike or go-slow is crippling electricity supply across Johannesburg, dismissing the reports as misinformation and assuring residents that power restoration teams remain fully operational.
The utility was responding to a voice note that has been circulating on social media, particularly in the southern parts of the city, alleging that contractors had downed tools over unpaid invoices, triggering widespread power outages.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said there is no strike, go-slow or service suspension affecting the utility’s ability to respond to outages.
“From the onset, we want to make it categorically clear that there are no outage challenges at City Power linked to a strike or work stoppage. There has been no halting of outage response by our teams or contractors,” Mangena said.
He confirmed that while the City has been engaging contractors on outstanding contractual matters, the backlog in payments has been significantly reduced in recent weeks and has never compromised service delivery. Mangena explained that City Power’s internal teams handle about 70% of all outage responses, with contractors accounting for the remaining 30%, mainly for specialised work or when internal capacity is stretched.
“All our resources remain fully deployed and operational, including during the festive season,” he said.
Mangena added that City Power is currently attending to just over 2 000 open outage calls across all Service Delivery Centres, a figure notably lower than the average of 3 000 daily calls recorded in recent weeks due to heavy rains.
“These figures clearly show that we are making progress in resolving low- and medium-voltage outages and that our teams are actively responding to logged faults. The claims made in the voice note are baseless,” he said.
He also strongly condemned calls made by a councillor in the same voice note urging residents to hire private electricians to fix electricity faults.
“Unless a fault is strictly within a customer’s private property, no unauthorised person is allowed to work on City Power infrastructure. Such actions are illegal, extremely dangerous and could result in serious injury, damage to the network or loss of life,” Mangena warned.
Residents were urged to report outages directly to City Power through official channels on 0800 003 156. Mangena further appealed to public representatives to act responsibly and refrain from spreading misinformation that could fuel panic or unrest within communities.
The Star
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