Between April and June 2024, the City of Cape Town spent some R7.3 million to fix theft of and vandalised electrical infrastructure, Cape {town} Etc reports.
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According to the City, the highest number of theft and vandalism incidents were recorded in Area South and Mitchells Plain, the largest impact being on streetlights.
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A total of 242 theft and vandalism incidents were reported, amounting to an estimated cost of repairs of R7.3 million. Theft and vandalism of streetlights in particular amounted to repair costs of R4.2 million.
Area South accounted for 153 (70%) of the total incidents.
Total theft, vandalism incidents 242 (May – June):
- Area South: 171 (70,6% of total)
- Area North: 36
- Area East: 35
City energy teams attended to 5 810 streetlight-related requests across the metro between 31 July and 13 August 2024. The total for the month amounts to more than 13 210.
The City services more than 245 000 streetlights in total.
‘We need our residents to stand with us to protect their power. We’ve launched our anonymous tip-off campaign called Let’s ACT – Protect Your Power – urging residents to report suspicious activity to us,’ says Xanthea Limberg, the City’s Mayco member for energy.
‘We will take action. We’ve put more boots on the ground with contracting services and also through our energy safety teams, beefing up resources with about R40 million to tackle this crisis.
‘We’ve added more security escorts to help our teams attend to outages caused by theft and illegal connections.
‘We’ve also looked holistically at this situation, replacing the copper material with aluminium where possible to reduce the street value, rolling out more and more underground cabling where feasible, increasing CCTV monitoring and looking at more innovative solutions that will be rolled out in the near future.’
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Also read:
City struggles with costly vandalism in water and sanitation services
Picture: City of Cape Town