LISTEN: Criminals taking advantage of load shedding to steal equipment, says De Ruyter

De Ruyter was speaking at the Economic Sabotage of Critical Infrastructure (ESCI) Forum roundtable discussion on Friday.

The forum, which is led by the Group CEOs of Eskom, PRASA, Telkom and Transnet, was established to find solutions and discuss progress in tackling the challenge of theft and vandalism of economic infrastructure.

De Ruyter said cable theft and sabotage remains a challenge. 

It has cost the embattled utility over R16,8 billion.

"The costs are enormous, the annual cost to the economy just for Eskom is estimated at about R16,8 billion. If you then add cost of disruptions to coal exports by infrastructure theft on railway lines, the costs to commuters, the economic impact of infrastructure theft is easily multiples of just impact on Eskom. 

We are in the process of quantifying that, but you can see that we are approaching a R100 billion so opportunities of avoiding these crimes is significant," said De Ruyter.

He said the utility is concerned about criminals who take advantage of the load shedding to steal Eskom equipment.

"We are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to announcing load shedding schedule. First, we want to minimise load shedding to the maximum as possible, but we know that because of the capacity constraints, it remains a risk to the South African public. We therefore seek to communicate as transparently as possible when loadshedding will occur to allow the public to prepare.

“However,  it has come to our attention that there are criminal elements who take load shedding schedule and knowing that lines or transformers will be deenergised, and easy to handle, then they interfere and steal the equipment. That puts a very difficult burden on us because on one hand we want to communicate to the public,  but on the other, we don't want to enable criminals to take advantage of such a situation.”

De Ruyter said the utility is looking at opportunities to collaborate with Transnet in protecting infrastructure.

"The opportunity exists for both of us to integrate our security efforts even more to identify areas where Transnet and Eskom have common infrastructure, it is in our interests to protect the railway lines supplying coals to our power stations. So, if we can collaborate on that there is a cost saving opportunity,"

Meanwhile, Transnet CEO Portia Derby said the business has experienced an increase in cable theft incidents over the last five years, leading to a massive revenue loss.

“Transnet Freight Rail has experienced an exponential increase in incidents over the last five years, which has resulted in increased tonnage and revenue losses, and increased repair costs. 

“Over 1500km of cable has been stolen in the past five years, with a net financial impact of R4.1 billion. We are confident that the coordinated and focused response by the ESCI Forum will yield positive results,” said Derby.

ALSO READ