Theft and infrastructure vandalism continue to hamper services meant to improve the lives of communities throughout the Polokwane Municipality.
The latest theft incident occurred at Makgeng village in the Ga-Molepo area last week when a pump-station transformer and cables were stolen. This theft will leave a few villages without access to water until the cables and transformer are reinstalled.
Ward 4 councillor, Charles Molepo said he noticed dangling and loose wires next to a pump station and upon investigation he discovered the transformer was missing and cables leading to the pump cut.
He said the Polokwane city council invested a lot of money in infrastructure development so that the communities’ lives could be improved. “The sad thing about these incidents is that the community will be left to suffer and will be stranded without water for weeks,” Molepo said.
He said it cost the Polokwane Municipality a lot of money to replace vandalised and stolen infrastructure, and temporary measures had to be put in place until the replacement. The municipality had to provide water tankers and because they were not sufficient to cover the whole area at once, it meant overtime had to be paid to the people delivering the water.
“The money spent to replace this infrastructure could have been used to upgrade the current infrastructure and provide other services, improving the lives of the communities we serve,” Molepo said.
He said residents could assist the municipality and the police by reporting the vandals, as it was suspected these criminals were also part of the community.
According to municipal spokesperson, Matshidiso Mothapo, the municipality experienced at least one case every two weeks of theft of transformers and cables. Sometimes the criminals were able to break into the pump stations and steal booster pumps and motors, and this took some time to be replaced.
In an effort to deal with the security of municipal infrastructure, Polokwane mayor, Freddy Greaver had previously announced that the municipality would invest in resources to ensure municipal infrastructure was secure. This project is being implemented and there was already progress with a number of pump stations being secured. The project will also be rolled out to other clusters of the municipality.
