AN ANGRY mob of Mufulira’s Kankoyo Township on Thursday evening stoned and injured two Zesco employees who had gone to restore power to the area, which had experienced 13 hours of load-shedding. The angry residents, who threw stones at Aaron Daka, 30, and another unidentified employee, expressed displeasure at the prolonged hours of load-shedding in the area. Zesco Limited spokesperson Henry Kapata and Copperbelt Commissioner of Police Charity Katanga confirmed the incident in separate interviews yesterday.

Mr Kapata said the two employees were assaulted on Thursday at around 19:00 hours. He said the company received a report from concerned members that they had no power supply from the morning up to the evening, a situation which made the company to send the two employees there. Mr Kapata said when the two employees reached the area, they noticed that one of their installations had been tampered with by vandals.

“The area faced abnormal load-shedding hours because one of the installations was tampered with and instead of the people embracing them, they started throwing stones at our employees,” he said Mr Kapata said Daka was badly injured in the attack while the other unknown employee escaped with minor injuries.

He said it is unfortunate that people opted to assault employees who were merely doing their job. Mr Kapata said the company police is handling the case and management is hopeful that the people behind the assault will be arrested and prosecuted. He said Kankoyo Township usually records a high number of vandalism, resulting in abnormal hours of load shedding.

Mr Kapata said the company spends about K150,000 in two weeks to replace vandalised equipment in the area, which does not help the company. He warned that the people found vandalising their installations will be arrested and prosecuted. Ms Katanga said Daka reported to the police that he was assaulted by an angry mob on Thursday at around 19:00 hours.

She said the victim sustained a cut on the head after the mob threw stones at him and was later issued with a medical report. In some instances, load-shedding has negatively affected businesses of many people and it has also angered a lot of people. Some areas are load-shed for as long as 15 hours in one day, a situation which has forced some people to turn to social media to lambast Zesco. Load-shedding was introduced following diminished levels at Kariba Dam, the country’s biggest power generation dam