City Power has called on the community of Alexandra and surrounding businesses to participate in a programme to ‘adopt and protect’ the utility’s electricity network infrastructure to minimise power outages.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said this would ensure that crimes such as cable theft, vandalism, and electricity theft in the form of meter tampering and illegal connections were contained. He added these crimes have a continuous impact on City Power’s business operations, resulting in significant revenue loss and a negative impact on service delivery to the residents of Johannesburg.
Since the start of the fiscal year, Mangena said in Johannesburg the utility had recorded more than 1 300 incidents of cable theft and vandalism, with arrests approaching 200. He added that City Power had also recorded 2 175 incidents of cable theft and vandalism in the 2021/2022 fiscal year.
Through this community partnership programme which seeks to build long-term partnerships with communities and the business fraternity through the sharing of information (comments and inputs), City Power pledged to:
- Establish sustainable partnerships with community-based structures to protect municipal electricity infrastructure from crimes such as theft, damage, tampering, or illegal connections
- Maintain stable and open communication on security risk factors and vulnerabilities affecting City Power’s electricity infrastructure through www.citypower.co.za, City Power Johannesburg, 40 Heronmere Road, Reuven, Johannesburg, P. O. Box 38766, Booysens 2016, Tel +27(0) 11 490 7000 or Fax +27(0) 11 490 7590.
- Deepen community partnerships in fighting infrastructure crimes.
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