Power utility City Power has welcomed the arrest of six suspects for being in possession of stolen copper cables.
According to City Power the suspects were arrested on Tuesday night during a raid on a warehouse in the Cleveland area.
“The suspects were in possession of 247kg of copper cables and copper bits from mini sub-stations and transformers believed to have been stolen from in the City Deep area in recent weeks,” City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said.
The suspects, Dwayne Santos, Sphamandla Mwelase, Snetemba Mwelase, Trust Moyo, Nkululeko Dube and Nakanani Sibanda, appeared in court on Tuesday morning on charges facing charges of theft of essential infrastructure and economic sabotage.
City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava has welcomed the arrest as the city clamps down on criminals damaging infrastructure.
“We welcome the sterling work by City Power security, and the whole SAPS Essential Infrastructure Task Team in ensuring that cable thieves are arrested and harshly dealt with.
“We lose millions of rands annually because of the scourge and this really impacts on our operations as an electricity entity as most of the outages we deal with on a daily basis are due to cable theft and vandalism,” she said.
City Power will be intensifying its operations, Mashava said.
“We will, in conjunction with our law enforcement stakeholders, intensify the operations in the hotspot areas, including Roodepoort where we have really been under siege recently.”
According to Mashava, the Essential Infrastructure Task Team had assisted a great deal in the fight against cable theft and vandalism since its inception, with at least 147 suspects arrested in 2022/23 financial year, City Power said.
Source: The Citizen, IOL, image from Twitter: @BTPBedHertBucks