The scourge of scrap metal theft is hard to police and affects economic growth. Photo for illustration: File
Six people have been arrested for being in possession of stolen copper cables.
The group of criminals were arrested on Tuesday night during a raid on a warehouse in the Cleveland area.
City Power said the suspects were in possession of 247kg of copper cables and copper bits from minisubstations and transformers believed to have been stolen in the City Deep area in recent weeks
“The suspects Dwayne Santos, Sphamandla Mwelase, Snethemba Mwelase, Trust Moyo, Nkululeko Dube and Nakanani Sibanda appeared in court on charges relating to theft of essential infrastructure and economic sabotage.”
City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava has welcomed the arrest as the city clamps down on criminals damaging infrastructure.
“We welcome the sterling work by City Power security, and the whole SAPS Essential Infrastructure Task Team in ensuring that cable thieves are arrested and harshly dealt with.”
“We lose millions of rands annually because of the scourge and this really impacts on our operations as an electricity entity as most of the outages we deal with on a daily basis are due to cable theft and vandalism,” she said.
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City Power will be intensifying its operations, Mashava said.
“We will, in conjunction with our law enforcement stakeholders, intensify the operations in the hotspot areas, including Roodepoort where we have really been under siege recently.”
The Essential Infrastructure Task Team had assisted a great deal in the fight against cable theft and vandalism since its inception, with at least 147 suspects arrested in 2022/23 financial year, City Power said.
City Power will be involved in a multidisciplinary security operation in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, on Wednesday morning, it added.
“The operation will target illegal activities including cable theft, illegal connections, bridged meters, illegal dumping, etc,”
Several police and law enforcement units from Region G, and CoJ enforcement departments including Environmental Health, Housing, will be there,” City Power said.
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