City Power and communities ramp up security to protect mini substations in hotspot areas

City Power has managed to secure 45 mini substations (MSS) with heavy-duty steel bracket enclosures to protect infrastructure in the Roodepoort area against theft and vandalism.

The power utility is working with local communities to safeguard infrastructure in Roodepoort and other supply areas around the city.

The integrated electricity network infrastructure strategy involves community-based structures to protect its electricity network infrastructure. 

The utility has been battling rampant theft and vandalism in the past few years.

In this financial year alone 2022/23, the utility has recorded more than 320 incidents of cable theft and vandalism, with more than 30 arrests made.   

City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena said the programme aims to build long-term partnerships with local communities, businesses and other stakeholders to deter and prevent crime.

“Some parts of Roodepoort, Randburg and Eldorado Park are now heavily guarded by the local community as part of this programme,” he said. 

Through this programme, the Roodepoort Service Delivery Centre (SDC) and local communities managed to secure 45 mini substations.

Mangena said the utility is targeting hotspot areas by identifying the infrastructure and welding roofs, repairing broken doors, replacing locks and installing security on the MMSs in different suburbs.

“Our City Power risk management are meeting with different neighbourhood watch forums, and local security companies to deepen collaborative networks at the local level with law enforcement agencies as part of a broader local crime prevention strategy which is currently being implemented across the City of Johannesburg.”

He said the urgency to engage the community was sparked by the fact that Roodepoort alone replaced 21 MSSs in July and August this year, with each MSS costing R700,000 to replace. “In essence, this meant that over these two months, City Power lost [over] R14m,” he said.

He urged councillors and residents to always be vigilant in their areas and question anyone claiming to be a City Power technician or contractor working on electrical infrastructure in the area by requesting them to produce ID cards and job cards explaining why they are working in that area.

Cut-offs 

Over the past few weeks, the utility embarked on aggressive cut-off operations in various areas around the city.

It warned it would take tough action in coming weeks against customers who default on their services and those who have hijacked buildings. This week the entity revenue protection team led by MMC for environment and infrastructure services (EISD) Jack Sekwaila and MMC for public safety Mcgini Tshwaku carried out a cut-off operation at hijacked buildings in the Joburg inner city and Jeppestown.

The area was targeted during an operation a week ago, but the plan was aborted for safety reasons after tensions started to rise. The buildings targeted owed City Power about R13.4m. 

City Power acting CEO Stanley Shabangu also led an operation to disconnect non-paying businesses and residential customers in Midrand. The entity targeted R13.9m in debt during this operation, including from a town house complex owing more than R5m.

The operation was part of City Power's aggressive efforts to ramp up revenue collection and enforce payment for services consumed. The entity is owed more than R300m by businesses and individuals in Midrand alone.

Mangena previously told TimesLIVE that since they embarked on the cut-off operations towards the end of last year, they were starting to see a change in the attitude of some of the customers that they had in the past cut off.

“They came forward to fix their accounts and start paying for the electricity they were using. We are starting to see some rands and cents coming through which shows that people are starting to take their debts very seriously,” he said.

He added that the only problem was the illegal connections in the informal settlements and hijacked buildings in the city. “The account is not there as we have pointed out,” he said.

TimesLIVE