Joburg - The power utility City Power chief executive, Tshifularo Mashava, has welcomed the arrest of six people for being in possession of stolen copper cables.
According to City Power, six suspects were arrested on Monday night during a swoop on a warehouse in the Cleveland area.
“The suspects were in possession of 247kg of copper cables and copper bits from mini sub-stations and transformers believed to have been stolen in the City Deep area in recent weeks,” City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said.
The suspects, Dwayne Santos, Sphamandla Mwelase, Snethemba Mwelase, Trust Moyo, Nkululeko Dube and Nakanani Sibanda, appeared in court on Tuesday morning on charges relating to theft of essential infrastructure and economic sabotage.
“We welcome the sterling work by City Power security, and the whole SAPS Essential Infrastructure Task Team in ensuring that cable thieves are arrested and harshly dealt with.
“We lose millions of rand annually because of the scourge, and this really impacts our operations as an electricity entity as most of the outages we deal with on a daily basis are due to cable theft and vandalism.
“We will, in conjunction with our law-enforcement stakeholders, intensify the operations in the hot spot areas, including Roodepoort, where we have really been under siege recently,” said Mashava.
According to her, the Essential Infrastructure Task Team had assisted a great deal in City Power’s fight against cable theft and vandalism since its inception, with at least 147 suspects arrested in the 2022/23 financial year.
The Star