City Power confirms change in contractors

City Power has denied claims of a crisis as a result of a change in contractors.

Johannesburg councillors this week sounded an alarm after the entity's immediate termination of contractors, warning this may lead to lengthier waits for outages to be resolved — and theft and vandalism.

“I have just been informed all contractors for City Power have been terminated with immediate effect. This means we are now facing an unprecedented situation where outages will continue to plague us for days, if not longer. The contingency allows for only seven contractors for the entire city,” one councillor told residents.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena in a statement on Friday said: “City Power would like to inform customers we have instituted some changes in our contractual work arrangements after the end of the term of the old contractors in May.

“It is worth noting the actual term for these contractors ended almost three years ago and they were renewed on a three-month basis arrangement until new contractors could be onboarded.

“We have onboarded new contractors since June 1 and our residents should know there is no crisis as suggested in the messages circulating, and that outages are being attended to.”

Mangena said the new team of contractors started on June 1 and have already hit the ground running across all City Power's service delivery centres.

“With the new contractors, we are responding to and also addressing some of our customers' concerns with regards to the shoddy workmanship by contractors which we saw ourselves as we did quality control after the work, but it also came out strongly many times in our meetings with the residents,” he said.

The power provider said its new contractors were highly skilled and “credited to even provide turnkey solutions which means we will save time and resources”.

City Power also confirmed the arrest of a contractor apparently found “tampering” with essential infrastructure. It said it had increased screening of new contractors.

“We do acknowledge that with every new onboarding, there will be a few glitches and system shocks. But we assure our residents there will be no disruptions in our operations and outages will be attended to as quickly as they should,” Mangena said.

“We also want to indicate, over and above these new contractors, we have reinforced internal resources with about 120 new technicians recruited since February.”

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