Johannesburg - Power utility City Power and law enforcement continue to crack down on cable thieves and vandals after 13 suspects were arrested over the weekend.
City Power announced on Monday morning that a total of 13 suspects were arrested over the weekend following 16 incidences of cable theft and vandalism that plunged various areas into power outages.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said that most of the theft involved underground copper cables, but mini-substations and pillar boxes were also being vandalised.
According to the power utility, two employees of a City Power contractor were arrested in Eikenhof; two suspects, who were in possession of two circuit breakers (100Amps), four jumper cables, one hacksaw, and two hammers used to vandalise infrastructure, were arrested in Honeydew; one suspect, who was in possession of skinned copper cables belonging to City Power, was arrested in Douglasdale; three suspects were arrested for tampering with infrastructure in Kensington; one suspect found inside a substation with tools to vandalise and steal copper was arrested in Booysens; and four suspects found with 23 m of cable were arrested in Nancefield.
According to City Power, cable theft disrupts service delivery and costs the company money in repairs and replacement.
"Communities are also adversely affected; for example, four substations— Nancefield, Eldorado, Nirvana, and Soweto — in the south of Johannesburg lost power, affecting many areas," Mangena said.
"Suspects were arrested in that area following the outages, thanks to community participation and the SAPS Essential Infrastructure Task Team. Some of the suspects mentioned above are appearing in court today; we expect the rest to follow suit this week."
"While City Power is doing everything possible to restore power, the issue of cable theft remains one of the biggest problems hampering our efforts to provide services," Mangena said.
The power utility said that it has so far recorded about 1 300 incidents of cable theft and vandalism since the beginning of the financial year, with arrests approaching 200. In 2021/22, it recorded 2175 incidents of cable theft and vandalism.
"We would like to thank the community, who played a role in most of the arrests of the suspects, and we continue to call upon residents to be vigilant against the destruction of our infrastructure and to report any suspicious activity," Mangena said.
The Star