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Johanneburg has been kept in the dark by cable thieves.
- Some areas of Johannesburg have been hit by power outages due to cable theft.
- On Thursday, a suspected cable thief was seriously injured and hospitalized after allegedly tampering with a mini-substation.
- The substation caught fire and left residents without power for more than 48 hours.
Some Johannesburg suburbs were without power after alleged “tampering” that left a mini-substation in East Town on fire and a suspected cable thief seriously injured.
According to Times Live, the incident had left several areas without power and it would take approximately 48 hours to restore power to the affected areas.
City Power spokesman Isaac Mangena said in that post that the city was concerned about the increase in vandalism and cable theft during load shedding.
He reportedly said that even though load shedding had now been suspended, the city was still suffering the consequences, with repairs delayed in several areas of Johannesburg.
A suspected cable thief was seriously injured and taken to hospital after tempering and vandalizing a mini-substation at Cnr Milner and East Str, East Town, Joburg. Cost of cable theft @CityJoburgZA millions in lost revenue and causing inconvenience to our customers and businesses. pic.twitter.com/Qh6nWJImM4
– @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) January 21, 2021
On Twitter, City Power said cable theft caused millions in lost revenue and was inconvenient for its customers and businesses.
in a short statementMangena said that three mini-substations had been affected, and that the loss of power was reported since 2:00 p.m. Thursday.
“The suspect was taken to the hospital and the law will run its course,” Mangena said.
City Power tweeted images of the suspect, whose pants had been burned in the incident. He also appears to have suffered severe burns to his hands and arms.
According to Mangena, cable theft and subsequent power outages are a serious problem.
Over the weekend, residents in various parts of Florida were disappointed when the scheduled cargo scrapping for the area ended Sunday night and power was not restored, according to Roodepoort Rekord.
Mangena reportedly said that while overnight load shedding was being implemented, cables were stolen from the Florida Auto Shop Feeder. For safety reasons, City Power technicians are unable to work on repairs during load shedding, so they were reportedly required to wait for it to finish before they could begin replacing cables and repairing any damage.
Huge cost
Mangena told EWN on Thursday that the repairs in Florida had cost the power company more than R1 million.
Mangena told the station:
We have had a lot of cable theft cases since stage 2 load shedding started and this is really a big problem for us at City Power because it has cost us so much. We have around R2 billion in technical losses, including cable theft problems, annually.
Other areas affected by cable theft in the past week include Eldorado Park, Alexandra and Devland.
– Compiled by Riaan Grobler
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