Africa-Press – South-Africa. The new spike in cable theft incidents has claimed the life of a security guard and has critically constrained coal supply to the Majuba Power Station by rail, Transnet has warned.
Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) delivers a maximum of three coal trains to the Majuba Power Station per day, in line with the capacity of a portion of the line which is owned by Eskom and feeds directly into the power plant.
Previously, TFR could run six trains a day on this line. It has, however, been severely damaged by the theft of overhead cables and critical overhead track equipment. Eskom has been unable to restore the overhead track equipment, the rail operator said.
Now, a new spike in cable theft incidents on the Container Corridor and in the Delmas-Ogies area has made even the three trains per day impossible to achieve.
“The cable theft in the Delmas-Ogies area has not only affected TFR operations, but has led to numerous train cancellations by customers due to disruptions of mine operations,” TFR said in a statement.
The challenge comes on top of severe operational issues facing Eskom, which continued to implement stage 5 load shedding on Wednesday as power demand outstrips available supply.
Further highlighting the security challenge facing Transnet, on Tuesday two guards were attacked during a cable theft incident in the Sentrarand area, in which one guard was killed and another was injured.
Sentrarand forms part of the Central Corridor, which serves as crucial junction feeding into all corridors – incidents in this region have devastating ripple effects across the network.
TFR expressed condolences to the family of the guard that lost his life and wished a speedy recovery to the critically injured guard. “We continue to call for heavier regulation of scrap metal dealers and increased law enforcement to protect economically essential infrastructure,” the SOE said.
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