Cable theft continues to put the lights out despite City watchdog camera
THE fight against cable theft has yet to be won, with a resident saying he was shocked to witness paving lifted across the bridge along Christian Barnard Street in the CBD, with cables stolen and broken wires still sticking out of the ground.
The City said it had received at least 512 complaints over the past year, with more than R15.5 million spent on repairing and replacing infrastructure damaged by vandalism, theft and illegal connections between July 2020 and March 2021.
Cable theft impacts on manufacturing, traffic congestion, production down time and loss of life.
Thomas Geh said he walked along the bridge en route to collect his car.
“Wherever there was a lamppost, a cable had been cut off. It is a very busy road and this has happened on both sides of the road.
“The City is trying to curb this by keeping the lights on to prevent people from stealing, but it seems criminals are just wearing insulation gloves because if you cut a live wire you get electrocuted.
“Isn’t anyone patrolling the streets? The scrap dealers criminally assist those thieves to make a living,” he said.
The City said keeping the street lights on was one of the methods it used to try and curb the crime.
“Keeping street lights on has repeatedly proved to be an effective deterrent as thieves rarely risk their lives by hacking into live wires,” said mayco member for energy and climate change, Phindile Maxiti.
In February this year, five copper cable thieves were sentenced to a cumulative 1 250 years in jail by the Western Cape High Court after they were found guilty of 50 counts of copper theft-related crimes.
The City added that from January to May this year the metro police strategic surveillance unit, which oversees nearly 850 CCTV cameras across the metropole, had detected 72 cable theft incidents.
Hot spots included Belhar, Manenberg, Khayelitsha and Woodstock. The City added that most incidents occurred on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with the highest frequency of incidents from 6pm to 9pm and 12am to 3am.