The City Energy Directorate’s ongoing interventions and efforts to protect streetlight infrastructure on major city routes is paying off. The success is thanks to the newly launched Energy Law Enforcement and Technical Unit (ELETU) and members of the public reporting acts of vandalism to the City and South African Police Service (SAPS).
The City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Councilor Beverley van Reenen and Energy officials visited a number of sites where the City’s interventions to protect infrastructure have been implemented to keep the lights on.
‘Our teams have been working hard and the work by our energy teams, including the ELETU teams, has seen remarkable success. Most notably along FW de Klerk Boulevard, Nelson Mandela Boulevard and in pockets along the M3 and M5. While repeat incidents of infrastructure vandalism are occurring in some areas, we are pleased to see a drop in the number of incidents in recent months. We ask residents to report all incidents of vandalism and to alert us to streetlight outages in their communities. The City’s Electricity depot staff will attend to the outages or repairs as quickly as possible. Vandalised infrastructure often takes longer to repair as it needs to be replaced.
Illegal connection operation success
‘We have also seen tremendous success with our illegal connection operations and this year we have ramped up efforts to disconnect illegal connections in the identified hotspots. As a result of our operations, areas such as Mfuleni and Philippi have seen fewer cases of prolonged outages and tripping. Our zero tolerance towards illegal connections is clear and our teams will continue to protect all communities, residents and infrastructure,’ said Councillor Van Reenen.
The City is doing all it can to attend to the vandalism and illegal connection related repairs in the city. Constant repairs of the same infrastructure is simply unsustainable and we call on the community to continue their support as we try to protect our infrastructure. Vandalism and illegal connection operations are unforeseen expenses and remain a challenge for the Energy Directorate’s budget planning processes.
