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Two white male suspects were arrested on Tuesday night for vandalism and suspected theft of electricity infrastructure in Roodepoort, Gauteng. City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the suspects cut and stole cables inside the substation leading to power going off.
The area of Florida and the surroundings in Roodepoort have been plagued by outages due to vandalism of the infrastructure and theft of the copper cables in recent times.
“Just this week Fleurhof, Witpoortjie, Discovery were some of the areas near where the suspects were arrested, that had incidents of cable theft and vandalism. Police have been asked to investigate whether they are linked to some of the theft in the area.”
Mangena added that the arrests came after a security beef up and heightened patrols of “all of our electricity installations across the City of Johannesburg, and the collaborations forged with the community structures including the Policing Forums, neighbourhood watch, and ratepayers associations to help curb the scourge of cable theft.”
He appealed to the justice cluster to ensure the punishment of those found guilty of vandalism and theft of essential infrastructure fits the crime and serves as a deterrent to other criminals.
