FF Plus pleads with police to curb West Rand cable theft

Police have been asked to intervene to fight increased cable theft as copper thieves up the tempo while all the attention is on load shedding.

Gauteng police have been asked to help residents who have suffered the consequences of copper cable theft in various parts of Gauteng recently.

This week, parts of the West Rand in Johannesburg were plunged into darkness for almost two days due to cable theft.

Initially, the residents of Florida Lake and Hamberg in Roodepoort mistook the power interruption for regular load shedding, until they were informed that it was an outage caused by cable theft.

In a joint statement, local councillors Caleb Finn and Gert Niemand said a section of supply cable to the suburbs was stolen along Main Reef Road. Two other cables were cut on Albertina Sisulu Road on Tuesday.

On Sunday, nearly a million rands of damage was caused to a substation in the industrial area of Randfontein by vandalism.

Now, the Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus) has approached Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant-General Elias Mawela to suggest counter-measures.

Gauteng FF Plus MPL Kobus Hoffman said the minimum sentence could be increased to 30 years and companies fined at least R100 million.

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