‘Crisis?’ — City Power responds to threat of ‘subcontractors association’ downing tools

City Power says there is no “crisis” within the entity and its contractors are not downing tools but working as usual. 

The Johannesburg entity was responding to a letter by the City Power Subcontractors Association (CPSA) which threatened to down tools, citing grievances. 

The entity's spokesperson Isaac Mangena said they do not recognise any association of subcontractors as they don't have a working relationship with them. 

“We have a direct working relationship with the [main] contractors. City Power does not pay subcontractors directly. We pay contractors,” he said. 

Mangena said he had seen a letter which doesn't have details or the name of anyone to contact if they were to talk to them. TimesLIVE could also not locate contact details for the association. 

“We don't know about the downing of tools. Our 65 contractors are hard at work responding to outages as normal, working alongside our more than 300 technicians and operators within the City Power systems.

“From our service delivery centres it is business as usual. We heard this shutdown will be on Monday but we don't have any instruction or sign of people not working.”  

City Power hunts for discrepancies in screening process of invoices 

Mangena said they have embarked on a rigorous screening of invoices before paying contractors. He said this was a regular practice regarding the relationship between contractors and the entity.  

He said the entity has picked up discrepancies in some invoices submitted by contractors since embarking on the screening process. 

“Some contracting companies we have been dealing with have been submitting wrong invoices, some claim to have done the work they have not done and sometimes they will duplicate invoices or overcharge on material. Many customers have complained about shoddy workmanship.”

He added the entity started a mechanism to do audits on-site and they are auditing everything that comes through before an invoice is paid. 

“This is a requirement. They know this is what is required of them in terms of the contract and service level agreements we have signed with them.

“For us to pay you, this is what needs to happen and that is what we are doing in terms of the clean-up of our payment processes so we can get value from contractors.”

Mangena said City Power suspected this process may have triggered some people to write "these kinds of letters" because the entity has “closed the taps on some of the corrupt activities done with external contractors”.

“They are feeling the pinch and decided to write the letter to cause chaos.”  

TimesLIVE