Cape Town - The City of Cape Town’s energy mayoral committee member Beverley van Reenen has decried the continuous attacks on the City’s electricity infrastructures in local communities across the city.
According to Van Reenen, despite the City’s bold efforts to curb the ongoing attacks, over the past few months, officials from the City’s electricity generation and distribution department have noted an increase in infrastructure vandalism, which takes place under the cover of darkness during load shedding.
Van Reenen said the ongoing vandalism of electricity infrastructure severely impacted the service and supply to residents in communities.
Van Reenen said: “The City is urgently attending to the required repairs in Ravensmead and Klipkop. As a result of severe damage to infrastructure in the area, nuisance tripping and prolonged outages often occur after load shedding. The City has repeatedly been repairing damaged infrastructure.
“We ask residents in the area to assist us while we carry out the work by reducing their energy usage and by switching off non-essential appliances during peak hours. This will greatly reduce the occurrence of secondary tripping after load shedding caused by the system being overloaded.
“Due to the scope of the required work to the sub-station and main supply cable, work is estimated to be completed between seven and 14 days,” she said.
The City is attending to the repairs of a medium voltage feeder cable and sub-station in Ravensmead. The voltage feeder cable was severely damaged by theft and vandalism in the past weeks.
According to the City, due to the extent of the damage the electricity supply network in Ravensmead is badly constrained, which causes nuisance tripping and extended outages.
“The City is attending to the repairs as a matter of urgency, and we ask residents in the area to minimise their electricity usage during peak hours by switching off non-essential appliances while the City attends to the work,” Van Reenen said.
Last year, the City’s energy department announced a R40-million budget to support law enforcement deployment, enhance security at key points and increase monitoring.
The City also announced a monetary reward for information on persons attacking its infrastructure across the metro.