Durban - Schools and homes in Pietermaritzburg are being hit by copper thieves whose early morning crime sprees are leaving behind a trail of destruction, mounting water losses and huge repair bills.
Mountain Rise Primary, Forest Hill Primary and EPS High are just a few of the schools to have fallen victim to copper thieves recently.
Residents in Lincoln Meade and Hayfields, as well as Imbali and Edendale, have complained of damage to their property and expenses incurred because of the water wastage caused by the broken pipes and taps.
Hayfields resident Daniel Lafferty said he had incurred thousands of rand in damages after thieves struck his home last week and broke pipes off the wall in the early hours of the morning.
“We were sleeping and did not hear a thing, which means they knew exactly what they were doing,” he said.
“Apart from the financial expense and the damage to the house, it was such a shame to wake up to the water gushing out of the broken pipes. All that water to waste, when people in our country are struggling for clean drinking water. It really broke my heart,” Lafferty said.
Msunduzi Municipality’s legal adviser, Lelani van den Berg, said that copper theft was plaguing the municipality and compromising service delivery, as well as costing the municipality a lot of money to replace stolen electrical cables.
To respond to the copper theft emergency in Pietermaritzburg last year, the municipality established an electricity task team to clamp down on copper theft in the city.
Before the establishment of the task team, Van den Berg said that six municipal substations had been plundered by copper thieves.
Following tireless work by the task team, however, 53 suspects had been arrested within a six-month period.
Of the 53 arrested suspects, nine were Msunduzi Municipality employees.
Meanwhile, 26 people alleged to be part of a syndicate responsible for the theft of “tens of millions of rand” worth of copper cables and conductors from Transnet and Eskom in KwaZulu-Natal, will go on trial in the Pietermaritzburg Regional Court next year.
The accused face 189 charges, arising from the theft and disposal of copper cables and conductors.
They were arrested during an undercover operation named “Nuclear”, involving the Hawks and privately owned Combined Private Investigations. Investigators revealed that last year alone, 86 crime scenes were recorded in KZN, in which overhead cables owned by Eskom or Transnet were cut.
Recent reports suggest copper cable theft is costing the country between R5 billion and R16bn a year.
Co-operative Governance Minister Pravin Gordhan said last month his ministry, together with those of Justice and Correctional Services, State Security and Public Enterprises, as well as the SAPS, had formed a working group to identify and make proposals to deal with the issue.
Daily News