Community irked by increase in electricity infrastructure vandalism

Communities in Roodepoort are reporting a marked an increase in the amount of theft and vandalism of its electricity infrastructure.

City Power is now calling on the police and other law enforcement agencies to do more to help curb the crime scourge.

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According to City Power, they have seen an increase in incidents of vandalism of minisubstations, transformer substations, streetlights, and theft of cables, fuses, minisubstation doors, copper bits in and around the transformers on a weekly basis.

“Last week alone we had about eight minisubstations vandalised, with 92 circuit breakers that were stolen, three chambers that are were with nothing stolen, countless number of cables that were stolen – with three happening last night – and 82 fuses that were stolen.

“We also had 18 pillar boxes that are vandalised,” said Isaac Mangena, spokesperson for the power utility.

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“Just between the weekend and this morning, we had 11 incidents,” he continued.

Suspect sustains burns after minisubstation blows up

On Tuesday, a suspect was badly burnt when the minisubstation he vandalised blew up in his face.

The team responding to the incident found burnt clothes at the scene, with the suspect nowhere to be found. Police are still investigating.

“With these vandalisms occurring on a weekly basis, it badly affects electricity supply to the residents who have to endure hours of outages, over and above loadshedding.

“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.

“While we are beefing up security as City Power, we are strained in terms of the resources to stop this,” Mangena said.

“We are engaging the SAPS and JMPD to assist us in this regards, 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,” he concluded.