City left powerless by cable thieves
It was heavenly when the rain finally broke the heatwave that swept across Joburg last week.
Sunday’s drizzle was followed by an almighty storm on Monday. Unfortunately for those on their way home after work, the storm – which started at about 2.30pm – proceeded to knock out robots across the city, resulting in a nightmare commute.
Sadly, storms are not usually the cause of the power outages that have become commonplace throughout Joburg. Residents repeatedly find themselves without power and City Powerless seems incapable of doing anything to curb the rampant cable theft on which they blame everything.
The volume of reports we receive every week of power outages from readers is incomprehensible. Making the situation even more unbearable is the frequency and length of time of each outage.
It seems there is little hope of anything changing any time soon and the assumption seems to be that we are all going to just accept that a huge chunk of our taxes will be used to fund cable thieves’ daily living.
Surely City Power can come up with more than just planning to “lay concrete over some of the cables”?
Why isn’t more being done to take on the scrap metal dealers? They are as big a part of the problem as the thieves themselves.
The British aren’t holding any punches when it comes to scrap metal dealers. They’ve created a public national register of scrap metal dealers on which all dealers must be registered. Government has also passed the Scrap Metal Dealers Act which makes cash trades for scrap metal illegal, without exception, and perpetrators are subject to unlimited fines.
Not only do British scrap metal dealers have to be licensed, local authorities have the power to refuse unsuitable applicants and revoke licences. Police have also been empowered to close unlicensed scrap yards.
All sellers of metal have to show verifiable ID which dealers must record and retain.
There has to be more that City Power can do to combat this epidemic.
