Cape Town - The City of of Cape Town’s fight against electricity infrastructure vandals is still an ongoing battle in spite of the local municipality’s fierce efforts to elicit support from affected communities with incentives.
Following a working visit to Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain, City of Cape Town Mayco member for energy Beverley van Reenen revealed that the City’s electricity teams had attended to more than 1600 street light repairs in Mitchells Plain in four months.
While the figure suggested that the City was making great strides in tending to torn-down infrastructure in the community, the directorate revealed that its department had received more than 3298 street light service requests for Mitchells Plain between May and August this year.
Van Reenen said while the majority of street light-related faults in the area are because of vandalism and theft, officials were on the ground attending to repairs timeously.
“Street lights in Area South are severely impacted by ongoing vandalism and theft of infrastructure, and we are trying our level best to attend to repairs as quickly as possible,” she said.
“Our teams attend to street light repairs within 14 days as per the service level agreements, however, due to the increased theft and vandalism incidents in Mitchells Plain and the greater Area South region, we have accumulated a backlog in service requests.
“We are doing all we can to attend to the required repairs, however, the rate at which theft and vandalism are happening in this area is putting strain on the City’s resources.
“This is simply unsustainable and we call on the community to continue their support as we try to protect our infrastructure,” Van Reenen said.
Mitchells Plain Community Policing Forum (CPF) chairperson Norman Mura said while they were pleased with the City’s attempts to fix the lights and associated infrastructure in Mitchells Plain, the City needed to forge stronger ties with the community and continue to sensitise the community to report acts of vandalism.
Van Reenen revealed that last week, City law enforcement officials and police arrested suspects found in possession of more than 150m of overhead electricity cable in Mitchells Plain.
She said: “Continuous acts of vandalism severely impact areas and we will continue to do our best to stop illegal actions in communities.
“In June, we attended to 50 000 service requests, which shows we have been working hard, despite the very challenging circumstances that are faced daily.”