Help combat cable theft
Cable theft is an issue that affects the community as a whole.
Police have issued a warning to residents to report cable theft and to be on the lookout for cable thieves.
According to SAPS, power outages are a huge inconvenience in the community. Cable theft refers to two things – metal theft which is theft of the physical electrical cable for its scrap metal, and cable television theft which is a form of copyright infringement which provides free subscription television. There are also cases where people are paid to do illegal connections of electricity, and this becomes a fatal practice, as some of these illegal connections can cost lives when live wires are left uncovered.
Anyone caught stealing a cable can be arrested and charged with theft, and they may be liable to serve jail time or pay a fine. Cable theft is an issue that affects the community as a whole, because due to cable theft we experience power outages, which means robots do not work, trains get delayed making us late for work and we can’t even charge our phones which we use to set alarms, which help us wake up in the morning.
Although cable theft is a problem, police officers try their best to eliminate this problem, by doing random visits to scrapyards to check if they are not purchasing any of the stolen cables for cooper, by doing crime awareness programmes at identified hot spot areas and also schools are visited to teach learners about cable theft and to encourage them to report anyone involved in this criminal activity.
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“It is everyone’s duty to report cable theft and people should be on the lookout for imposters who pretend to work for the municipality,” said Constable Sithobile Nyoni of Umlazi SAPS communications office. If you suspect any criminal activity related to cable theft, call 080-1313-111 or the police on 086-001-0111.
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