Residents fed up with cable theft during load-shedding
The continuous theft of cables during load-shedding has left residents of Cedarberg and Drakenberg Street frustrated.
We as the residents of Cedarberg and Drakensberg streets are now fed up with the criminals stealing our cables while we are under load-shedding.
In the last couple of months for most of the time, some of the residents were left without power for more than eight hours due to a stolen cable.
The power outages occur at the same houses all the time and it normally happens at night.
Over the past weekend, once again we were without power for more than eight hours. This is very frustrating because we already have load-shedding three times a day and then we also deal with the power outage caused by criminals.
We as residents are not allowed to lock our power boxes, so what is the solution?
Each time our power outages get reported via the EMM app, we notify the ward councillor of our area, Alderman Izak Berg from IRASA and the Alberton Record. We follow the right procedure of reporting the outage, but still, there is a 24-hour turnaround time for technicians to attend to the matter.
Every time a cable gets stolen or a power box gets vandalised it must surely cost the municipality money to repair.
So my question is what can be done to prevent this from happening? What can be done to keep the criminals away?
Frustrated resident – Albertsdal
Comment from EMM:
“The city has contracted a security company that assists with the theft of cables and the vandalism of boxes. Of late, the Alberton area has been experiencing theft of fuses.
“We have been welding the boxes close to trying to curb the issue. It is always advisable to unplug your appliances whenever there’s a power outage because sometimes there are power surges on restoration,” said metro spokesperson Zweli Dlamini.
