On Thursday, March 30, residents of Coetzee Street waited for the power to turn back on after load-shedding, but to no avail.
Friday morning at 06:00 they knew something had to be wrong as the power still hadn’t come back on. After inspecting the substation they noticed the transformer had been stolen. Despite numerous complaints to Johannesburg City Power residents are still struggling without power, explained Hentie Fourie, a resident of Coetzee Street. According to Zelda Alberts, another resident, City Power employees were at the scene.
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During the weekend of April 1, a security guard allegedly put his hand in the substation, causing it to explode and injuring himself in the process. He is currently still in the hospital.
According to Isaac Mangena spokesperson for City Power (CP), a replacement mini substation was found and the Estimated Restoration Time (ETR) is the morning of April 4.
On Friday, March 31, a City Power contractor was arrested after video footage showed him replacing 20m of copper cables with Aerial Bunched Cable (ABC) cable on Hamberg Road, Roodepoort.
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According to Mangena, the contractor has been taken to the Honeydew Police Station for processing, further the contractor will be fired and his contract terminated.
“The Roodepoort Service Delivery Centre, also reported that last night [March 30], one of their transformer inside a chamber around Matholesville was stolen but no arrests have been made. It is not clear if any of the arrested suspects is linked to this theft of a transformer, and the police are investigating,” stated Mangena.
“City Power’s business operations are continuously negatively affected by essential infrastructure crimes, with the entity losing about R4-billion across the City from cable and equipment theft and vandalism, every year. These crimes further contribute to delayed service delivery to the residents in the City of Johannesburg. We have a mounting problem of cable theft and vandalism and we have never ruled out that the exacerbation of these crimes could be due to the involvement of some of our contractors or internal employees,” Mangena added.
CP urges any resident who has witnessed or knows any person with a transformer or electrical equipment to anonymously inform the police, further they are asking residents and councillors to question those claiming to be City Power technicians or contractors by asking for IDs and job cards, explaining their work in that area.
“Tampering with essential infrastructure is a serious crime and carries a maximum of 15 years of jail time without an option of a fine. City Power is committed to safeguarding and protecting the electricity network infrastructure against various crime risks and we will continue to work with law enforcement agencies to curb these acts of crime,” Mangena concluded.
