Power utility City Power, law enforcement and community formations have arrested at least 20 people for cable theft in the past week.
City Power said it planned to have cable theft reduced by at least 20% this year, and said it was already seeing the result after it announced that from April 19 to 23, at least 20 people were arrested for cable theft in areas across Johannesburg.
On April 19, nine heavily-armed men between the ages of 20 and 25 were apprehended by residents in Eldorado Park, who saw them digging up copper cables in the Bushkoppies area. The men allegedly shot at the residents. They were handed over to Eldorado Park SAPS.
The next evening, two people were seen cutting copper cable along Vickers Road, City Deep. They were found in possession of a side cutter, bolt cutter, knife and razor knife. They were arrested and taken to Moffatview Police Station.
On April 23, more arrests were made in Eldorado Park, an identified cable theft hot spot. Three people, found burning and skinning seven metres of 300mm x 3 core aluminium cable valued at about R5 000, were arrested on Concorde Road along the N12.
At another location, six people were arrested, City Power said. Four were alleged cable thieves and the other two were guarding an Edcon Group facility.
The four alleged thieves were in possession of four metres of 185 x 3 core copper cables and were arrested in Treu Road, Selby. A preliminary investigation led law enforcement to arrest the security officers as the alleged thieves stated during questioning that the officers assisted them by opening the gate of the premises and were to receive a share of the proceeds of the crime.
City Power acting chief executive Tshifularo Mashava commended the collaborative work between City Power security, law enforcement agencies, and the community formations for their recent successes in the fight against cable theft and vandalism.
“The spate of cable theft and vandalism has severely affected City Power and City of Johannesburg residents alike as the incidents are a major contributing factor to most of the recent outages. As part of the turnaround security strategy, City Power has contracted and beefed up armed responses tasked with increasing visible patrols along our electricity installations,” she said.
Mashava said the power utility had embarked on a drive to collaborate with Community Police Forums and other community-based structures to protect the network.
“Collaborative partnerships with communities, sector policing forums, neighbourhood watch, private security sector and law-enforcement agencies are the only sustainable solution to protect our electricity network infrastructure. We cannot afford to lose this fight,” she said.
City Power said it would continue to work with law enforcement agencies and the communities in terms of developing strategies and synergy in dealing with the impact of cable theft.
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