I am responding to the article in the Bedfordview and Edenvale NEWS’ June 26 edition, mysterious missing meters.
On Friday, June 22, our residence and home-office in Essexwold suffered a significant surge of electricity which resulted in everything tripping and shorting out.
We were left with no electricity for the day.
An electrician arrived early evening to detect and repair the fault.
He found that someone had deliberately tampered with the electricity connections in the street meter box.
Connections had been unscrewed and the neutral wire was removed.
The result was that 400 volts of electricity flowed directly to our property.
Our household and office equipment run on 220 volts, much of our electronic equipment was damaged.
The electrician suspects that the tampering may have been to cause the electric fence and alarm system to short, so that criminals can gain access to the property.
But on reading the article, perhaps it was also an attempt to steal meter boxes?
We have tried to reach the municipality to request a lock be put on the wall meter box as it is now a security risk.
However, we have been shunted from pillar to post, so we had to install our own lock and key. Hopefully they will call us to open the box when they come to read the meter.
We also heard that several other residents in Essexwold had electricity problems on the same day.
Perhaps it should be highlighted how vulnerable we as residents are, with our water mains and electricity supply accessible by anyone in the street.
If there is a problem we are forced to go outside while attackers wait.
MRS J LAU, ESSEXWOLD.
EDITOR’S COMMENT – Spokesperson for the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM), Mr Samuel Modia commented, as follows:
The incident is regretted, especially given the amount of damage caused by the criminal element accessing the electricity supply enclosure.
The energy department will do an audit on locking mechanisms in the area and effect repairs to those that are damaged.
In most cases, criminals target the valuable metals that are used to conduct electricity for the scrap metal value.
It is, however, not impossible that criminals would also tamper with the electricity supply to gain access to a property for more sinister reasons than the theft of valuable metals.
The EMM has measures in place to track down these criminals and a fair number of these criminals are arrested, prosecuted and sent to jail for extended periods.
People partaking in these illegal activities should understand that Ekurhuleni is becoming a high-risk environment for them and that no efforts will be spared to bring them to book.
