Theft and vandalism cripple power supply in Joburg

Residents of Johannesburg are in the grip of unrelenting power outages caused by theft and vandalism of the city’s electricity infrastructure.  

While load shedding was suspended for the festive season period and was reintroduced yesterday, the city’s power utility City Power has been inundated with hundreds of calls relating to power outages since the beginning of the year as it grapples with alarming daily acts of theft and vandalism.

City Power said in Roodepoort alone, which has been identified as one of the city’s hotspots for theft and vandalism, 30 mini substations had been replaced at the cost of R24m in the past three months.

The city said the vandalism would often happen without anything taken, which suggested some level of sabotage. It also said each mini substation could feed up to 20 households or three streets.

In addition, the utility said it spent R3.6m a day paying its workers overtime and contractors to restore electricity to residents who had been plunged into darkness for days.  

Since the beginning of the year, a number of areas across the city including Midrand, Lenasia, and large parts of Randburg and Roodepoort were left in the dark for up to two days before power was restored.  

These outages happened while load shedding had been suspended over the weekend. 

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena also said the utility had experienced challenges in terms of the aging infrastructure.

He said when load shedding was suspended during the festive season, theft and vandalism had gone down “because criminals have risks of being electrocuted”.

Mangena said since December, 60 contractors had been appointed to assist City Power technicians. He said they had also placed security personnel in hotspots areas and to have boots on the ground.  

In some areas, residents said they had been left without electricity for three days and in some, it had taken  the utility up to seven days for power to be restored due to vandalism and theft.

A survey of the utility’s social media pages yesterday showed that there were close to 2,000 calls registered with its service delivery centres across the city in the past 24 hours.  

Mangena said vandalism and theft had contributed to unplanned power outages in most areas.

He said areas such as Roodepoort, Randburg and Lenasia were deemed “problematic” areas largely due to their aging infrastructure and cable theft.

“Cable theft is very high... you find that our cables are basically stolen every day,  that is the biggest contributor that we have to that outage [December holidays] and yes the issue of equipment failure has also contributed to some of the challenges we have,” Mangena said.

In July last year, the city said it had spent over R200m in six months to replace stolen cables from substations.

At the time Mangena said this had impacted on its revenue as the utility did not have a separate budget for cable theft. This would often result in money that would have been used for other services being redirected to repair and replace stolen cables.

He said a number of people, including former City Power employees, had been arrested in connection with cable theft and vandalism. 

Cllr Ingrid Reinten, from the Roodepoort area, said most of the outages were due to infrastructure. She said that the bigger problem they had witnessed over the festive season period were individual housing or streets being affected.

“The depot was taking a long time to acknowledge the outages and there was a big delay in getting some of those [streets] restored. Some people will go out for longer because of the delay from the depot in terms of responding to the lower voltage or the smaller outages.

“Between Christmas and new year, there were obviously less contractors and less staff that [contributed] to the delay and some of the service delivery being addressed."

She said some residents spent Christmas Day without electricity and by December 29 the situation had still not been addressed.

“City Power should get more teams out to do the assessments so that they actually know what is going on. We would like City Power to be better in understanding what the issues are.”

Ralf Bittkau, a ward councillor in the Randburg area, said theft and vandalism had also crippled residents.