eTHEKWINI Municipality is being inundated with complaints from the public about power outages resulting from electricity and cable theft.
Mayor Cllr James Nxumalo said offenders have an inflated sense of entitlement in both attitude and behaviour, which will no longer be tolerated. The city’s ratepayers are the backbone of this municipality and they are often inconvenienced by power outages leading to the reduced enjoyment of the services they pay for,” he said. Nxumalo said electricity and cable thieves must be stopped.
Cable and electricity theft leads to damage to infrastructure costing the municipality some R230-m annually. Children die when they come into contact with uninsulated electrical wires in their homes, streets and in open fields where they play.
“The negative impacts of illegal electricity connections include the hefty costs of replacement of infrastructure and hiring security, the shutdown of business operations, loss of income and loss of exports. Cable theft also leads to power, communication lines and transport network outages and leads to negative investor perceptions,” he said.
The municipality has extended its services to informal settlements by providing residents with water, sanitation and electricity to qualifying informal settlements.
Nxumalo urged citizens to demonstrate civic pride and a sense of co-ownership of resources, assets and the environment.
“We should all play our part towards enhancing the economic, social and cultural diversity of our city, by not vandalising municipal or community infrastructure and infringing by-laws,” said Nxumalo.
Acts of vandalism taking place in our communities cannot be addressed by the municipality and police alone. They require vigilance from community members and we must not look away when we know our relatives, neighbours and friends are involved in these illicit activities.
Several initiatives and modifications to the infrastructure have been taken to minimise the impact of illegal connections:
- Illegal services contractor teams, escorted by security guards remove illegal connections on a regular basis. Some of the perpetrators of these illegal activities have been arrested however, charges are often dropped due to the lack of tangible evidence and the low fines imposed are not a deterrent;
- Affected service connections have been converted from underground mains to overhead mains, to minimise the interruption of supply to customers;
- The overhead, bare copper, low voltage circuits have been replaced with aerial bundled conductor (ABC) as a deterrent to tapping onto the exposed copper lines;
- Circuits have been reconfigured to reduce the interruption of supplies;
- Awareness programmes have been conducted to educate customers and citizens on safety, reporting of theft of electricity and the consequences of connecting electricity illegally;
- The municipality has previously deployed security guards in areas with high cable theft incidents, but this initiative was discontinued, as one guard was shot dead;
- Short poles have been replaced with longer ones to prevent access to the overhead cables and connections.
Nxumalo invites the public to share their ideas with the city including any advanced cable theft prevention methods that will help us win the fight against this crime.
Any suspicion of cable theft must be reported to:
- Electricity’s call centre 080-13-13-111, SMS 083-700-0819 or email custocare@elec.durban.gov.za.
- Cable theft hotline on 031-311-9611.
- SAPS 10111
- Metro Police emergency line 031-361-0000
Reports of electricity theft should be made to electricity’s contact centre.
The minimum response time is 48 hours.
