Africa-Press – South-Africa. The City of Johannesburg said on Wednesday it is working on an emergency plan to deal with the alarmingly high levels of cable theft.
City Power continues to battle rampant cable theft, with instances drastically increasing over the festive period.
According to City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena, more than 150 incidents of cable theft and vandalism were recorded in December alone.
This past weekend, he said, saw eight incidents being reported in Roodepoort alone.
“All these are compounded by load shedding as criminals take advantage of the downtime to do their evil deeds.
“Roodepoort is the hardest-hit where we have since 1 January recorded at least 19 incidents of theft and vandalism – eight of them happened this past weekend,” Mangena said.
Environment and Infrastructure Services MMC Michael Sun said the City launched an infrastructure protection initiative last year to work alongside neighbourhood watches and other groups taking it upon themselves to help safeguard City Power’s electrical grid.
But despite their efforts, cable theft remains rampant in the City.
Sun said through the initiative, 147 cable thieves were arrested in the last six months.
This was almost double the amount compared to the previous 12-month period, he added.
“This situation breaks my heart. Cable theft and infrastructure vandalism are killing service delivery across the country.
“This year, we are going to redouble our efforts and ensure City Power works in tandem with law enforcement agencies and shoulder to shoulder with communities to extinguish this horrendous crime against lives, livelihoods and our national stability,” Sun said.
“We need communities to work with us this year to ensure we put an immediate stop to this plague.”
He added more than 200 Jojo tanks provided by Johannesburg Water to supply areas without formal services were either stolen or vandalised.
“It is very seldom that information about incidents of cable thieves and vandals or Jojo tanks disappearing or being damaged are being shared by the communities in which they occur.
“This is why I am appealing to every single Joburger to not sit back and watch our valuable infrastructure be stolen or vandalised only to enrich the criminals living among us.”
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