City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, announced on Wednesday that the state-owned power utility has taken note of deceptive material from an unknown association claiming to be leading a slowdown on behalf of subcontractors.
“We re-iterate 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 these threats and ensure those behind them are arrested and prosecuted. As far as City Power is concerned, there is currently no protest from any of its recognised contractors, and operations are proceeding unimpeded since Monday - the day tools were supposed to be down,” Mangena said.
He mentioned that City Power has contracted with 65 contractors to give additional assistance in handling infrastructure repairs and maintenance.
“City Power has beefed up security to safeguard its employees and contractors in the event that the purported strike in question disrupts our operations and threaten lives and property.
“The purported downing of tools will not deter the utility from proceeding with its plans to root out any element of fraud, corruption and the overall poor workmanship from service providers.” Mangena said.
Additionally, he claimed that all of those contractors have not organised a strike, and whatever grievances they have are handled through established methods.
“As a matter of fact, we meet often with the contractors to talk about any issues that may disturb their work. These contractors, along with more than 300 internal technicians and operators, are hard at work responding to outages as per normal.”
But with the claims of a strike, the organisation will be having a pre-planned meeting with the 65 contractors to discuss any challenges that they may be encountering regarding this audit, and any other problems they may be having with paying their subcontractors.
IOL