City Power employee nabbed for cable theft
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena says the criminal activities have a profound impact on the entity's efforts to supply power to its customers.
City Power has welcomed the arrest of the power entity’s employee on allegations of cable theft. The power entity of the City of Johannesburg cracks down on the involvement of internal staff in these crimes.
The 43-year-old employee at the Alexandra Service Delivery Centre was apprehended on February 8, and is facing charges of theft of non-ferrous metals. The employee has since appeared in the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court.
He is alleged to have stolen the copper cable around the Alexandra area and City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the upsetting development does not come as a shock to City Power.
“We have always maintained that the alarming rate at which our infrastructure is stolen and vandalised points to the involvement of internal collaborators,” he said.
According to preliminary information, the suspect may have been working with other individuals in the commission of the crime and Mangena believes the SAPS is pursuing those leads, and that the entity was hopeful that the net will soon close in on all those involved.
Mangena said the latest incident comes less than a month after another employee and a contractor were arrested for attempting to steal cables in the Randburg area. The 30-year-old electrician and a contractor were caught red-handed, in the middle of unearthing a 90m-long cable, valued at more than R100 000.
“While we are deeply concerned by the news, we are pleased that the internal processes coupled with collaboration with communities and law enforcement are starting to bear fruit,” Mangena added.
In December last year, City Power’s group executive Charles Mohlaka-Tlouane launched an internal probe to expose any internal linkages to what seemed like an organised criminal syndicate targeting City Power infrastructure.
Mangena said these criminal activities have far-reaching implications for the entity in its mandate of providing electricity supply to residents of Johannesburg. “Since January, we recorded more than 200 cases of cable theft and vandalism and in that period, the rate of power supply disruption also went up, with a lot of our customers complaining about lengthier outages in various service centres.”
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