Salga’s heartbreak as country’s infrastructure collapses

Metros ramp up efforts to arrest cable theft scourge

The South African Local Government Association (Salga) has warned that the scourge of cable theft in the country’s economic hubs is causing untold damage to the economy.

The entity said the metros and secondary cities have suffered major economic setbacks from power disruptions induced by cable theft.

“Cable theft ultimately costs the metros and municipalities millions of rand in lost revenue, and damages the reputation of the metro with negative media publicity and loss of confidence from potential investors. This includes the cost of fixing the damage caused to the infrastructure,” Salga’s spokesperson Sivuyile Mbambato said.

Councillor Beverley van Reenen, mayoral committee member for energy in the City of Cape Town, said the city “has budgeted for a significant boost in an effort to curb the scourge of vandalism of our energy infrastructure”.

“This comprises some R40million in the city’s draft 2022/23 budget for the energy directorate to secure infrastructure, deploy security patrols in hotspot areas and permanent security deployments at strategic infrastructure,” Van Reenen said. “The city is spending millions of rand each year to repair and replace vital electricity infrastructure as a result of theft and vandalism. The replacement cost is on average R27-million per year.”

Mabine Seabe, spokesperson for the mayor of Joburg, said in the 10 months between June 2021 and March 2022, City Power has experienced 1602 incidents of copper cable theft and vandalism.

“This equates to between five and 10 incidents per day. These acts of sabotage have cost the city close to R21-million in repair and replacement costs, with the costs to the economy running into billions of rands. Equally, in the last year, Joburg Water experienced 3081 incidents of damage and theft to infrastructure at a cost of more R22-million,” Seabe said.

Salga said the City of Johannesburg has embarked on an expensive, yet critical initiative to replace copper cables with aluminium bundle cables.

Some metros have increased by-law enforcement operations at scrap yards and second-hand dealerships, to ensure that the traders are fined or held accountable for cable found at their premises that cannot be legitimately accounted for.

“It is in our plans this financial year to partner with the private sector, institutions of higher learning and the security cluster, to support municipalities in understanding the technological innovations and increasing the uptake of available interventions,” Mbambato said.

Spokesperson of Tshwane metro Selby Bokaba said: “The City has alarm security systems in various substations. The city is working on getting new technologies deployed to protect the vulnerable infrastructure. The process for these new technology is still underway and systems will be deployed once the process is finalised in due course.”

Emfuleni MMC for Finance Hassan Mako said: “We have increased security measures around all infrastructure as they are assisting at policy level to strengthen the regulations dealing with related incidents. An Independent study says Emfuleni alone has lost R57 million on cable theft.”