Cable thefts and illegal connections are steadily becoming one of the biggest issues for residents. Rate-paying citizens often bear the brunt of the crime. The severe damage that the illegal connections and cable thefts cause to local substations consequently leaves residents without electricity until City Power can repair the issue, sometimes for several days.
While this happens throughout the country, Ward 70 residents are especially familiar with these circumstances. Late on the evening of Sunday, 17 January, while residents in the Florida area were experiencing load-shedding, opportunistic thieves stole electrical cables near Florida Lake. Due to the theft of the feeder cable, there was a sudden spike in electricity which directly led to the damage to one of the oil cables between Florida Glen and Florida North Substations, meaning electricity in the area never came back on when load-shedding ended. Later that same day, current transformers (CTs) at the Florida North Substation failed and burnt out, and due to the damage to the oil cables, City Power was unable to revert to another cable when the CTs blew, which left even more parts of the ward without power.
After four days of City Power implementing load rotation between the Florida North and Florida Glen Substations, and attending to separate issues at the Nursery Substation, electricity was finally restored to the affected areas late on 21 January.
Just when Ward 70 councillor, Caleb Finn, thought his residents were in the clear power-wise, another cable theft occurred on 24 January, this time in Fleurhof. After days of non-stop phone calls, the councillor once again had to tell his residents that the damage at the site of the theft meant that the area needed to be without electricity until City Power could conduct repairs.
Ward 71 residents are also regular victims to the power interruptions caused by illegal connections and cable theft, predominantly stemming from the Princess informal settlement.
MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, Mpho Moerane, expressed concern over the rise in cable theft incidents across the city, saying that since the year began, City Power has recorded more than 170 incidents of cable theft to the value of R2,2 million. Forty-three of these incidents occurred between 20 and 24 January alone. Councillor Moerane said that even though most of these thefts occurred during load-shedding, cable thefts are still committed when the electricity is on.
The MMC called on law-enforcement agencies, the police, JMPD, neighbourhood watches and Community Policing Forums (CPFs) to assist in curbing the scourge of thefts. Despite the large number of incidents in January throughout Johannesburg, only two arrests were made. Since the start of the 2020/ 2021 financial year, City Power has lost R14,4 million worth of cables. “This excludes the cost to the actual repair work to the infrastructure and materials,” stated the MMC.
City Power has said that they have been replacing copper cables with aluminium bundle cables as part of their mitigation strategy as the aluminium has much less value.
To find out how local police would be handling the issue, the Record contacted representatives from both the Florida Police Station and Roodepoort Police Station.
Captain Juanita Yorke, spokesperson for the Roodepoort Police was contacted to enquire about the local police station’s strategy to curb the thefts. The following response was received, “Please refer to City Power communication official for further comment on the matter”.
Spokesperson for the Florida Police Station, Sergeant Mpho More, stated that she would gather information and respond to the Record’s as soon as possible, at which point an update will be published.
