Plans by City Power to curb cable theft in Mulbarton area
Community and local law enforcement will work together to curb cable theft.
City Power management has put together a team to work on solutions to the problem of cable theft in the Mulbarton area.
The area has experienced several outages in recent times due to the theft of cables – an undesirable situation, which has prompted the community to petition City Power.
Since January, there have been 28 outages affecting the Mulbarton substation.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said only four of those outages were due to planned maintenance, with the rest due to cable theft.
“The situation is exacerbated by the fact that most of our servitudes run through open velds, which makes them vulnerable to theft. Hot spots include Impala and Kliprivier roads and around Mulbarton Hospital. The situation is getting very dangerous with heavily armed gangs involved in vandalism and theft.
“The team put together by management led by the CEO will meet the councillor and community leaders, and security structures this week. The meeting seeks to find lasting solutions to the problem of cable theft in the area,” explained Mangena.
City Power is adopting a community-centred approach to dealing with vandalism and theft whereby the community is central to the protection of the infrastructure serving them. They will co-strategise alongside the Community Policing Forums, neighbourhood watch, local SAPS and JMPD to ensure they curb the scourge of theft.
Cable theft causes serious inconvenience to the residents and causes extensive damage to City Power infrastructure, which poses a serious threat in a long run.
“City Power has increased security capacity around our installations in Mulbarton to ensure we curb the theft in the area. This includes armed response and patrols on our servitudes and overall network.
“Over and above, the partnerships with the communities will assist to curb theft and explore other options, including installing technology and doing patrols. This approach will be rolled out across the City where we have cable theft problems.
Our fight with cable theft is also dependent on the security cluster to ensure arrests and prosecution of the criminals as a deterrent.
“Mulbarton substation is fairly new and has not had any serious technical problems yet. We are, however, planning to increase capacity with a third 45MVA transformer with the upgrades earmarked in the coming months,” he said.
