City Power has made a call on local communities and businesses to combat crime against electricity infrastructure.
The power utility calls on local communities and businesses to participate in its community partnership programme on electricity network infrastructure security to protect critical infrastructure, minimise power outages, and increase revenue generation.
According to City Power, infrastructure crimes such as cable theft, vandalism, and electricity theft in the form of meter tampering and illegal connections have a continuous impact on City Power’s business operations, resulting in significant revenue loss and a negative impact on service delivery to residents.
City Power Spokesperson, Isaac Mangena said since the start of the fiscal year, the entity has recorded approximately 1 300 incidents of cable theft and vandalism, with arrests approaching 200.
The entity recorded 2 175 incidents of cable theft and vandalism in the 2021/ 2022 fiscal year.
“Through the community partnership programme, which seeks to build long-term partnerships with communities and the business fraternity through the sharing of information [comments and inputs]. City Power pledges to establish sustainable partnerships with Community-based Structures to protect municipal electricity infrastructure from crimes such as theft, damage, tampering, or illegal connections. Maintain stable and open communication on security risk factors and vulnerabilities affecting City Power electricity infrastructure and deepen community partnerships in fighting infrastructure crimes,” said Mangena.
Details of the full programme are available on City Power’s website.
Parties interested in adopting and protecting the City’s electricity infrastructure should fill out the application form (Annexure A), indicating the type of network infrastructure, its physical location, the security measures to be installed, and any other pertinent information.
The interested parties are to submit a separate list as an addendum to the application if they have more than one electrical installation.
Applications should be sent to General Manager and Security Management via email to sthela@citypower.co.za.
