Many areas in and around the City of Johannesburg have been without power since Friday after at least 17 incidents of cable theft and vandalism were reported.
City Power has pleaded with the residents across the various communities to remain vigilant and assist in protecting the infrastructure which it claimed has come “under siege”.
Several areas in the west of Johannesburg were plunged into darkness following reports of cable theft and malicious damage to electricity infrastructure.
One person has since been arrested. City Power said cable theft is becoming a chronic problem.
“The cables at South Road Bridge and Progress Road were stolen again last night, for the third time in less than a week.”
“These left customers of Reefhaven, Lindhaven, Groblerpark, parts of Witpoortjie and surrounding areas without electricity,” it said.
City Power added that another cable was stolen in Florida the same night after it was replaced.
“This affected parts of Florida view, Rand Leases Extension 5 Rugby Club, parts of Fleurhof, Wilgeheuwel, Radiokop and Honeydew, and are also without power supply due to stolen cable.”
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the city received about 670 electricity outage calls, of which roughly 150 concerned places that had been without power for over 24 hours in Roodepoort.
Mangena noted with concern the lasting effect of cable theft within the city’s operations area.
“The problem of cable theft continues to be a sore point in our operations as it disrupts power supply to the customers. It’s the reason we were dealing with many outages throughout the weekend,” he said.
City Power said its teams have managed to restore some areas.
“The teams have managed to back feed some of the affected customers and are still at various sites working to identify possibilities of back feeding more areas.”
The city also stated that on Thursday it would meet in Florida with the South African Police Service, Community Policing Forum, Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department, neighbourhood watch, private security and councillors to put in motion plans to deal with this problem.
Source: News24, The Citizen, Engineering News, image from Twitter: @CityPowerJhb