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Six suspects were arrested on Tuesday for Cable theft. The suspects, that include four(4) Zimbabweans and two South Africans, had already dug up trenches to access the cables along Cypress road, in Zonnehoewe, Roodepoort when security pounced after a tip-off from the community.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the suspects told the security they were contractors doing a job for City Power. “Upon interrogation, the suspects failed to produce job cards nor City Power ID cards needed.The suspects then attempted to bribe the security officers with about R5 000, which the security duly refused.”
Three suspects fled the scene and three were immediately arrested and taken to Honeydew police station where they were charged with damage to, and tampering with, essential infrastructure, bribery, among other crimes.
“The suspects had already dug about 10 meters of a trench during the arrest and 3 copper cables were exposed and ready to be spiked, cut and stolen.”
The three suspects who fled the scene were later arrested along Peter road and taken to Honeydew police station.
City Power Acting CEO Tshifularo Mashava praised the collaborative work by the community, the neighbourhood watch, and City Power security.
“The issue of cable theft is one of the major contributing factors to the outages we deal with daily across of the City of Johannesburg.”
City Power spends millions of rand to repair and replace stolen cables and the associated infrastructure.
