A video has surfaced showing unknown thugs vandalising street lights on Albert Street in Weltevreden Park. They were caught on CCTV camera on January 30.
Ward 89 councillor Leah Knott urged residents with any information regarding the identity of the men in the video to come forward. “If anyone has any information that can assist authorities in locating the culprits, please let me know. The City spends billions on repairing vandalised and damaged infrastructure that could rather be spent on upgrading our networks.
“This type of behaviour actually makes me incredibly sad and angry, particularly as we spent the last few weeks with City Power repairing all the outages in the ward.”
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the footage confirmed their earlier assertion that there seems to be deliberate attacks on the City’s infrastructure. “This is pure criminality that should be met with punishment fit for the crime.” Mangena said there are high levels of street lights being vandalised across the city. “Roodepoort, Lenasia, Eldos, Soweto and Jeppe are some of the hotspots of this vandalism. Especially in secluded areas including main roads like Malibongwe towards Lanseria, the Golden Highway and the M2 highway, far from the people, our streetlights have been vandalised, and photocells, fittings and cables were stolen. In some instances the whole metal pole was mowed down for no apparent reason. The poles are not taken to, for example, scrap yards, but are left there.
“We believe there are deliberate and concerted efforts by certain individuals like these ones in this video, who are hell-bent on seeing the streets in the area dark at night for whatever reason. As you can imagine, this is very inconveniencing to the residents who, immediately after this act, will feel unsafe walking and driving there after dark,” he concluded.
Meanwhile Councillor Knott confirmed that three of the culprits in the video had been identified, and that City Power was investigating the matter.
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