The destruction of critical infrastructure has a lasting impact on the lives of residents.
Two suspects have been arrested in connection with vandalism and cable theft in Florida, August 24. The pair were caught near a substation chamber in possession of steel-cutting equipment, tools, cables and the padlocks of the substation they had just broken into. The alleged thieves were apprehended by community members and taken to Florida Police Station.
The actions were the suspected cause of the Tuesday evening power outage, but electricity has since been restored. “The arrests came after a security beef-up and heightened patrols of all of our electricity installations across the City of Johannesburg, and the collaborations forged with the community structures including the Community Policing Forums, neighbourhood watches, and ratepayers associations to help curb the scourge of cable theft,” said City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena.
“The area of Florida and the surroundings in Roodepoort have been plagued by outages due to vandalism of the infrastructure, and theft of the copper cables in recent times. Just this week Fleurhof, Witpoortjie, and Discovery were some of the areas near where the suspects were arrested, that had incidents of cable theft and vandalism. Police have been asked to investigate whether they are linked to some of the thefts in the area,” continued Mangena.
He expressed hope that suitable punishment would be handed down to those found guilty of destroying essential infrastructure. He urged residents to report any suspicious movement around City Power infrastructure to the entity’s Security Risk Control on 011 490 7900/7911 or to contact police on 08600 10111.
