Johannesburg – Hours after irate residents from Naturena marched in protest to City Power offices, where they demanded that electricity be restored, two contractor workers were arrested for stealing cables in the area.
On Friday night, two City Power contractors were caught in possession of 10-metre long copper cable.
The pair were part of the contractors tasked with the repairs of the earlier cable theft along the Eikenhof line supplying electricity to Naturena.
City Power Spokesperson Isaac Mangena, on Saturday, said: “Information was received that during their work, the two contractor employees cut and stole copper cable from the trench, thus extending the length of the cable stolen earlier by criminals”.
Mangena said the City Power security manager responsible for the area “operationalised the information”.
The manager led a team of City Power security personnel and members of the SA Police Service Essential Infrastructure Task Team to the scene of the crime.
“Upon further investigation, it was discovered that more cable had already been stolen and sold when the arrests were made,” Mangena said.
“During preliminary investigation, suspicious activities were detected which resulted in the arrest of the two contractor employees.”
Mangena said City Power “welcomes the arrest of contractors who allegedly stole copper cables that left residents of Naturena and the surrounding areas without electricity for a prolonged period this past week”.
Commenting on the arrest of the contractor workers, City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava commended her security personnel and the swift response by the law enforcement officials that led to the arrests.
“While we are pleased with the arrest and the strong message it sends, we find it deeply concerning that some of the contractors are seemingly part of a syndicate involved in cable theft,” said Mashava.
“We have never ruled out the involvement of internal people in some of the theft, and that is why we have strengthened internal controls to ensure that we bring to book all those implicated.”
Mahava said the arrests were significant for City Power because they show that additional security measures that “we have put in place, are beginning to bear fruits”.
She added: “We will intensify the screening of the contractors working on our network, and increase surveillance to ensure we curb this problem.
“Yesterday, customers from Naturena, marched to our depot demanding power to be restored, after having spent days in the dark.
“This prolonged outage was as a result of multiple cable thefts by heavily armed criminals around the Eikenhof area, which also affected power supply to the Johannesburg Prison.
“City Power will now move with speed to restore power to the rest of the affected areas.”
The suspects are being held at Mondeor Police Station, where they face charges related to tampering and theft of essential Infrastructure.
