Three City Power workers nabbed for cable theft and vandalism
City Power has confirmed the arrest of six suspects for crimes relating to cable and equipment theft and vandalism of essential infrastructure.
Two of the suspects are City Power contractors and one is a City Power employee.
"The first incident happened on Thursday night in Hillbrow, where City Power received an anonymous tip-off about five suspects who were attempting to steal a transformer. The suspects were caught in the act and taken to Police.
"Two trucks and a bakkie bearing City Power logos have been taken in by the police.
"Another City Power contractor was caught earlier today on video, removing 20 metres of copper cable and replacing it with ABC cable along Hamberg Road, Witpoortjie. He has been taken to the Honeydew Police Station for processing,” reads the statement issued by City Power on Friday.
The Johannesburg power utility says internal disciplinary action will be taken against the employee, and the contractors will be fired and have their contracts with the entity terminated.
"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.”
"It is extremely disappointing for us as these are the people that are entrusted with keeping the lights on but instead, they are the ones contributing to the lights being off,” added City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava.
