Cable Thieves on the Loose! City Power Issues Urgent Warning About Dangerous Syndicates

City Power has issued a warning to residents in Alexandra and Lenasia to be aware of individuals pretending to be the company’s technicians who are working on infrastructure. According to the company, a widespread network of syndicates in these areas disguises themselves as City Power employees and steal cables from households. These individuals have been reportedly stealing service cables and targeting homes in the Lenasia and Alexandra Service Delivery Centres. City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, has urged residents to question anyone claiming to be a City Power technician or contractor and to request identification and job cards. Mangena also revealed that the entity has been receiving increased complaints regarding thefts of service cables, as reported by Alex News.

Additionally, City Power is currently experiencing high-call volumes, with 1,549 outage calls recorded at the beginning of the day. Teams from all Service Delivery Centers (SDCs) have been dispatched to investigate these outages. At the same time, other groups attend the outage calls. They plan to increase their teams throughout the day to speed up repairs and restore power. However, they have been struggling to deal with the high demand for repairs due to cable theft, vandalism and multiple cable faults, as well as running out of stock materials such as MV cables, LV cables, mini substations (MSS), bulk metering kiosks, breakers, and joints. The company’s infrastructure is also negatively impacted by load shedding, which often causes mini substations, pole-mounted transformers, and transformers to catch fire or fail post-load-shedding due to different reasons, including overloading and inrush current. As a result, the company is replacing more stock material than it can replenish.

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