Johannesburg - Power utility City Power has called on the police and other law enforcement agencies to do more to help curb the increasing rate of vandalism and theft of electricity infrastructure around Roodepoort.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said it has seen an increase in incidents of vandalism of mini-substations, transformer substations, street lights, and theft of cables, fuses, mini-substation doors and copper items in and around the transformers.
Mangena said this happens on a weekly basis.
He said last week alone, City Power had about eight mini-substations vandalised, 92 circuit breakers that were stolen, three chambers that were vandalised with nothing stolen, countless number of cables that were stolen, with three happening on Monday night alone, where 82 fuses were stolen and 18 pillar boxes that were vandalised.
Just between the weekend and Tuesday, it had 11 incidents.
On Monday, a suspect was badly burnt when the mini-substation he vandalised blew up in his face.
“The team responding to this incident found burnt clothes at the scene with the suspect nowhere to be found. The police are on his trail,” Mangena said.
City Power said these acts of vandalism occurring on a weekly basis badly affected power supply to residents who have to endure hours of outages, over and above load shedding.
“More particularly, it affects our operating and material budgets at the depot that get depleted, and it is putting too much pressure on our overtime bill,” the spokesperson said.
City Power said while it is beefing up its security, it is strained in terms of the resources needed to arrest this scourge.
“We are engaging the SAPS and JMPD to assist us in this regard as we believe some of the acts border on serious crimes of sabotage, and crimes against the state. We are also planning collaborative efforts with private security, neighbourhood watch, and CPF to assist City Power in safeguarding electricity infrastructure,” Mangena said.
The Star