Johannesburg – Six more alleged members of a Free State cable theft syndicate have been arrested, power utility Eskom said in a statement on Friday.
The latest arrests following the arrest of a suspected member of the syndicate earlier this month.
In a statement, Eskom said: "On Monday, six members were arrested. The group is believed to be behind the recent spate of cable theft incidents on Eskom power lines between Allanridge and Odendaalsrus in the Free State."
The resultant power outages affected essential services such as Sedibeng Water, which supplies hundreds of homes in the province with water, as well as Avgold, who provides numerous jobs in the province.
The arrest came after members of Eskom's investigating team spotted a suspicious vehicle parked near an area that had been identified as a hotspot for cable theft.
Upon questioning, it became apparent that the driver of the vehicle, a white Toyota Hilux bakkie, was part of a group that was involved in cable theft.
"The driver took the investigators to the gang's meeting point where his accomplices were waiting and five more members of the gang were arrested on the scene and approximately a quarter of a million rands worth of stolen cable was recovered," said Eskom.
The suspects and all the evidence were handed over to the Allanridge police who opened a case.
"The replacement cost of the stolen cable is not a true reflection of how much cable theft costs organisations like Eskom, Transnet and Telkom. One has to take into account the cost of the cable itself, the labour required to fix the problem, the productive time lost by those affected by the resultant power outage and the increased cost of assigning security personnel to prevent the recurrence of the crime. This is the real cost of cable theft."
Eskom said estimates were that cable theft cost the economy between R5 billion and R7 billion a year, while Eskom spends about R2 billion every year on the replacement of stolen copper cable.