The City of Cape Town is offering R5,000 to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest, confiscation of stolen or illegal goods or the handing-in of illegal or stolen goods relating to electricity infrastructure.<\/p>\n
This follows criminals vandalising and stealing critical electricity infrastructure for months in an already power-strained metro.<\/p>\n
“In recent months, the city has seen a slight decrease in incidents in some areas; however, reoccurring incidents continue to take place in hotspots. Between July and September 2022, the city recorded 122 incidents of electricity vandalism and illegal connections in the metro,” said the City of Cape Town.<\/p>\n
We have spent considerable resources in trying to keep the lights on and will continue to conduct patrols in the many hotspot areas around the Metropole, said Beverly can Reene, the City’s mayoral committee member for energy.<\/p>\n
The city has embarked on initiatives, including earmarking approximately R40 million to help curb and prevent vandalism of critical energy infrastructure in communities.<\/p>\n
According to the City, this initiative forms part of the approved 2022\/23 budget, which came into effect on 1 July 2022.<\/p>\n
In the 2021\/22 financial year, more than R50 million has been spent on repairing and replacing damaged electricity infrastructure in areas across the metro, reported the City.<\/p>\n
In the most recent case of criminality targeting electricity supplies, criminals managed to gain access to the tunnel by breaking security fencing and managed to steal and vandalise a number of lights, plugs and cables, noted the City.<\/p>\n
Despite the crime, the electricity supply in the area was unaffected, and necessary repairs were taken. According to the City, these repairs will take up to four months to complete due to the limited amount of spares and the specific equipment required.<\/p>\n
\u2018The city will not allow the actions of opportunistic criminals to have a direct impact on service delivery to residents. We urge residents to assist us so that we stop this scourge,” said the City.<\/p>\n
The national power utility Eskom has failed the nation to maintain a stable energy supply, with stage 6 recently being implemented. As seen in Johannesburg, when load shedding reaches higher levels, there is a substantial increase in cable theft<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Offering rewards is not Cape Town’s first effort<\/a><\/strong> to mitigate power outages. In early October, the city announced that it issued a new tender to establish ‘third-party aggregators; to reward residents and businesses who allow their power to be turned off voluntarily to drive consumption downwards.<\/p>\n The aggregators, according to the city, would turn off agreed-upon non-essential electrical equipment that some Capetonians said they could do when usage needed to be reduced; this could be done remotely via installed smart devices.<\/p>\n Read: <\/a>Load shedding: Joburg prepares for the worst<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cape Town has another plan to try and push back against the damaging effects of Eskom’s failings and criminality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":650167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[2356,26],"class_list":["post-650153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-city-of-cape-town","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650153"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650183,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650153\/revisions\/650183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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