More power theft exposed
Electricity thieves have now moved to Mkholombe, near Bhobhoyi with illegal connections.
POWER theft continues, virtually unchecked… even after the Herald exposed a 300m cable brazenly laid across the entire toll road from Uvongo to Masinenge recently.
This beggars belief as the entire country stews over load-shedding – going all the way up to ‘Phase Three’ at times this week – and the number of deaths and injuries caused by illegal connections in recent months.
No one has been arrested yet for the toll road cable and now the Herald has been tipped off about another situation at the Mkholome informal settlement near Bhobhoyi.
The Herald once again received a tip-off by a concerned resident claiming that illegal cables were connected to numerous informal homes.
Ward 20 Councillor Sello Morafe confirmed the matter and said the community had alerted Eskom, but there had been no response.
One homeowner said that because of the illegal connections, many of the RDP houses in the area were experiencing regular power cuts.
“Why must we suffer because of these criminals who are stealing electricity? Why is Eskom not doing anything?”
Another said the Marburg substation was just metres away from where electricity was being illegally connected.
“Can’t they see these cables?”
The Herald contacted Eskom in Durban again, but no one responded.
Operation Khanyisa, an Eskom project aimed at countering the problem, said that theft occurred in various ways, including: fraud, metre tampering and bypassing, abstracting or branching off or diverting electric current, illegal connections and selling pre-paid electricity vouchers stolen from vending machines.
Operation Khanyisa said that electricity theft took place ‘everywhere’ and was not restricted to poorer areas.
