The City of Cape Town offers a R5,000 reward to help the city put an end to infrastructure vandalism and illegal connections.
The city is offering a reward to anyone who provides information that leads to an arrest, confiscation of stolen or illegal goods, or the handing in of illegal or stolen goods.
This reward is also applicable to information leading to the arrest of people vandalising, damaging, or stealing electricity infrastructure or installing illegal connections.
The city claims that repairs and disconnections of the same vandalised infrastructure are not feasible or safe, place pressure on city resources, and negatively impact our residents by leaving neighbourhoods without power.
This comes as the city removed illegal connections in the Philippi area on Thursday.
“Today's operation is an example of the city intensifying its efforts by carrying out regular illegal connection disconnection operations in the metro's hotspots.
“We are aware of and are monitoring all illegal connections and infrastructure vandalism hotspot areas,” Mayoral Committee Member for Energy Councillor Beverley van Reenen said.
Van Reenen said that the city is serious about protecting its critical infrastructure and the residents who are legally supplied with electricity, and it will not tolerate vandalism that impacts this supply for our residents.
“Illegal connections leave whole communities in darkness due to overloaded connections and exposed live wires,” Van Reenen said.
Van Reenen further added that criminals have seemingly taken advantage of Eskom’s recent constant load shedding to target our infrastructure.
“Philippi is one of the areas that has been especially hard hit, and this often causes prolonged electricity outages.
“We wish to be extremely clear: we will not allow these acts of criminality to have an impact on the supply to residents. Our zero-tolerance approach to this type of criminality and safety hazard will continue,” she said.
Van Reenen also said that the estimated cost of repair to vandalised infrastructure, including damage caused by illegal connections in the last financial year, is R56 million.
IOL News