‘Crime pays in SA’: How criminals are wreaking havoc on SOEs

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) across the country continue to be under siege, dealing with a barrage of criminal activities ranging from petty to dangerous and disruptive.

During an economic sabotage of critical infrastructure forum held by representatives of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), police, Eskom, Telkom and Transnet on Friday, candid discussions on whether the fight against crime was being won or lost were held.

The general consensus was that the fight was not being lost, but that new approaches could hold the answer.

According to Telkom data science executive Stefan Steffen, the abovementioned institutions have suffered a direct loss of R1.4 billion over the last 12 months, with more than 54 000 incidents recorded.

Common goals

Eskom CEO André de Ruyter identified an opportunity to integrate security efforts by focusing on areas of common infrastructure.

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This would be particularly helpful between Transnet and Eskom, with a collaboration ensuring efficiency and cost saving measures.

Close to R10 billion is spend on Prasa, Eskom, Telkom and Transnet security measures alone, but despite this, criminals continue to wreak havoc on infrastructure.

He said there was greater scope to “harness collective SOEs and private enterprises”.

Transnet CEO Portia Derby said although there was not much low hanging fruit to immediately change the situation, behavioural change was fundamental.

This would also involve providing greater security for communities as well.

“If intervention is scaled up enough, the benefit is beyond looking at our infrastructure.”

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Soaring copper costs

From commuters to Eskom customers, copper theft affects a significant amount of South Africans.

The annual cost incurred by Eskom alone for copper theft is around R16.8 billion. This excludes the cost of disruption to coal export infrastructure, railway theft, Prasa commuters.

Taking this into consideration, De Ruyter said the economic impact of copper cable theft could easily run over R100 billion.

“Crime actually now pays.”

Although not unique, commodity-driven crime is another form of economic sabotage; one that threatens an already precious situation amid soaring rates of unemployment and rising costs of living.

Telkom group executive Pat Mazibuko said the high prices of copper do not help the situation either.

He suggested joint economic projects to drive employment being a potential solution.

According to Derby, out of the 1 249 arrests made for copper theft, only 45 convictions have been made.

And of those convicted, the kingpins responsible for larger crime syndicates are not being caught.

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She emphasised capacity being ramped up, to see a case through from arrest to conviction, or risk continuing to have significant, and expensive, infrastructure stolen at record rates.

Load shedding and crime

As diligently as consumers check their load shedding schedules, so too do criminals.

De Ruyter said there is a significant risk to the public when load shedding schedules are shared, but that communication was essential to allow people to prepare as far ahead as possible.

“But it has come to our attention there are criminal elements who take scheules and, knowing transformers are de-energised and safe to handle, they can interfere and steal equipment.

“This puts a burden on us. We need to communicate but we don’t want to enable crminals to take advantage. But we are erring on being transparent and communicating more, while taking steps in the background.”

Another shadowy element of Eskom’s crime woes is ongoing ghost vending, which De Ruyter revealed was still resulted in large revenue losses.

Around 2018, Eskom lost control over machines used to generate codes for prepaid electricity purchases. These codes are now sold by criminal syndicates at a significantly reduced rate, which results in profit losses for the SOE.

Although there are plans to replace the meters that can read the existing codes, and tracing the syndicates involved, Eskom has approximately 6.9 million customers – an undertaking De Ruyter says will be “massive” and expensive.

Progress is, however, being made to re-engineer the online vending system, he assured. In addition, 14 suspects involved in a ghost vending syndicate were arrested in June last year.

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