As the nation continues to grapple rolling blackouts, Lwandle residents are facing a different struggle – the theft of electricity cables into their homes.
According to reports, loadshedding offers criminals an opportunity to steal cables into homes and this was even higher during the previous bout of loadshedding, which saw the country hitting Stage six.
At least 34 homes were permanently left without electricity after thieves stole the cables.
Lwandle Police Station commander Col Xolani Williams said they find themselves in a dilemma as they had to register so many cases.
“If five houses are attached in one pole, do you mean now all those individuals must come to open a case at the police station? There’s an Economic Infrastructure Task Team deployed in our area and it is looking at the reported cases,” he said.
Williams said thieves were thinking ahead and pounced a lot during loadshedding. “One of the challenges we have is that we don’t know where are these cables sold. So, we need the community itself to stand up because in some cases the culprits are known,” he said.Williams called for communities to intensify patrols to assist in the problem as they are the ones that suffer the consequences.
To try and deal with the situation, a meeting between Ward 86 councillor Xolani Diniso, along with Lwandle police and the SA National Civics Organisation (Sanco) was held at eMaholweni on Thursday 6 October.
During the meeting, residents committed to form patrols to protect and take responsibility of the local infrastructure.
Mnoneleli Lengoasa, Ward 86 Sanco treasurer, said they called the meeting to “plead” with the community.
“As the local structure we pleaded for our communities’ intervention after noticing this crisis. We want communities to take their roles and ensure there’s no vandalism and theft of property that helps them in our community,” he said.
“We want communities to form patrol structures so that we protect our infrastructure as at the end of the day we are the ones that feel the pinch. Our communities have showed willingness to protect what is theirs, and that pleases us,” said Lengoasa.
Diniso said “enough is enough”. “As the community we need to ensure that we protect the municipal infrastructure such as the electricity cables. The community will not progress if it allows such incidents to occur unabated as we had experience over 30 houses being targeted by criminals in September alone,” he said.
He said they have now also initiated patrols and Sanco was also to engage local scrapyards that were said to be problematic.