The City of Johannesburg has lost R200m in six months because of cable theft, while Ekurhuleni only spent R4m over the past two years. replacing stolen cables.
Because these metros do not have budgets specifically to deal with cable theft, they have to divert some funds meant for the maintenance of infrastructure to cater for theft of cables.
At least 2,176 cases have been reported in Joburg between July 2021 and June 2022.
In most cases, thugs dig trenches to access the cables running underground and remove copper and aluminium conductors for illicit trade, worth billions of rand.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said copper theft cases have increased over the years, which has been exacerbated by load-shedding.
About 830 cases were reported between January and June 2020 and during the same period in 2021, about 1,116 cases were reported.
“With load-shedding also comes the increase in the problem of cable theft because criminals cannot be seen at night, giving them enough time to dig cables from the ground,” he said.
“These crimes cause immeasurable revenue loss and negatively affect the economy and service delivery. The city does not have a budget for cable theft and so money that would be used for other services now has to be re-directed to the repairing and replacing of stolen cables.
“We would be able to invest the money and revenue we lose to other functions including carrying more infrastructure maintenance, upgrade of the cables and substation, and even electrification of new settlements,” he said.
Hotspots in Johannesburg are mostly in the southern suburbs and townships where there are vast portions of open spaces and bushes.
Mangena said a syndicate of well-organised people was operating in the areas and has over the years become brazen in its attacks while also attacking guards stationed at substations.
“These people operate in numbers of about four to 19. They are well resourced. They are armed and have bakkies in which they carry these heavy and sometimes long cables.”
Ekurhuleni has also seen an increase in the theft of cables with copper and aluminium conductors.
“This could be driven by high resale value of non-ferrous metals. The price of copper is on record high levels at scrap dealer level,” said spokesperson Zweli Dlamini.
“Theft is however not only limited to cables, but electricity distribution equipment is also the target of thieves and vandals.”
In 2020, the metro spent R1.9m out of its operational budget that is mainly intended for planned maintenance and normal repairs, to replace stolen cables. Between January 2021 and June 2021 the cost of high voltage cables stolen was approximately R2.5m.
Dlamini said the constant unplanned interruption of electricity supply also had a serious impact on the industrial sector as well as businesses in the area.
“The City of Ekurhuleni has many industrial customers that are operating 24 hours a day and manufacturing products for the local and overseas market. This outages may even lead to people losing their jobs as companies shut down,” he said.
“Redirecting the budget towards fixing cables also stops other planned projects, slowing down services such as reticulation of areas that are without electricity and refurbishment of infrastructure.”
Energy expert Chris Yelland said cable theft causes more power outages than load-shedding, crippling the finances of municipalities.
“If you look at the number of kilowatt energy units that are not delivered to people's houses as well as the hours people are without power as a result of power outage, these are way longer than load-shedding because it is not a continuous outage. When it comes to cable theft, when the electricity switches off it stays for long periods of time, sometimes for days,” he said.
“When a cable is cut, municipalities can't sell electricity for that period of time, so they're losing out on revenue. The local economy is losing out on electricity which is used for productive work, factories and plants,” he said.
sibiyan@sowetan.co.za
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