File image: Eight suspects were arrested for possession of stolen Eskom cables worth R2.5 million after a joint operation by police tracked the goods to a Blackheath scrap yard in 2022.
Cape Town - Despite the City of Cape Town’s attempts to curb cable theft and tampering of major power supply infrastructure in Schaapkraal, residents spend days without electricity.
Eskom said it had spent more than R38 million between January and April this year.
The areas recently experienced severe blackouts from April 30 to May 4 due to theft and vandalism of infrastructure.
This was just a month since the City’s Mayco member for energy, Beverley van Reenen disconnected and restored power in the Philippi area.
Various illegal connections were reportedly linked to the surrounding informal settlements.
The infrastructure was fixed and wiring replaced.
Resident Jackie Rappersberg hurt her arm in the dark during the illegal power outages.
“It didn’t make much of a difference because we started experiencing outages a few days after the disconnection,” she said.
“Those people in the settlements started reconnecting and we are now back to the same situation.
“We have suggested to the City that they must rather find alternatives to supply the settlements with electricity to minimise pressure.”
She said the City’s teams regularly went into the Philippi area to resolve these faults and that Illegal connections severely overload the electricity infrastructure, which causes the circuit breakers to trip.
“We are monitoring the metro’s hot spots and we have boots on the ground to fight cable theft, vandalism and illegal connections,” she added.
A sum of R40 million has been budgeted for law-enforcement deployment which excludes the the millions of rand spent on fixing vandalised infrastructure.
Another resident, Anwar Van Boom said he suffered losses to the outages which became an unbearable cost for his family.
“We have engaged and told them to secure the main box.”
Van Boom has forked out money for a generator and spends R200 every second day for fuel which runs at a cost of R4000 per month.
In a recent news report, Strand residents assaulted an alleged cable thief after being without electricity due to cable theft.
Ian Cameron of Action Society said he didn’t agree with vigilantes, but did not blame the community.
“I think government agencies, whether it’s the SAPS or even local law-enforcement, don’t necessarily always have the depth to make sure that we have convictions if and when arrests are actually made,” he said.
Eskom’s media said millions were spent on replacing stolen and vandalised infrastructure across the Western Cape.
“The continuous repairing and replacement of Eskom infrastructure is not sustainable,” they said.
“These criminals’ activities threaten the stability of the network and the safety of communities.
“Eskom loses millions replacing the same batteries, kiosk, copper lines and transformers.
“This leads to wasteful expenditure and resources that could have been used to maintain the current network.”
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