In 2016, a 17-year-old died while trying to re-establish an electricity connection in Olieboom Road in Schaapkraal. Recently more vandalism has been reported, allegedly by residents of an informal settlement.
Urgent infrastructure repairs have had to be carried out in Schaapkraal due to repeated vandalism.
The destruction caused by vandalism and theft is so severe in some areas that entire circuits and grids need to be rebuilt, according to the City of Cape Town, and the restoration of power in many cases is a complicated task that takes time as it could take a week or more to rebuild an entire grid for a street or area.
Ward 43 councillor Elton Jansen apologised to residents last week for the inconvenience of repeated and continued outages in the area. He said that less than 24 hours after a brand new transformer was installed, it was vandalised by a group of angry people allegedly from Egoli informal settlement, who are demanding electricity.
The usual areas affected by the outages include Kraal, Boom, Boundary and Varkensvlei roads as well as Philippi and the surrounding areas.
The City said work is ongoing and the required infrastructure is being sourced so that supply is restored as soon as possible. Still, it is not sustainable to keep repairing the damage caused by illegal connections.
Siseko Mbandezi, acting Mayoral committee member for energy, said over the recent months, the City’s Electricity teams have been attending to numerous incidents of infrastructure vandalism and damage caused by illegal connections, which have affected supply to Schaapkraal residents.
Due to safety concerns in Schaapkraal and the immediate surrounding areas, the City’s Electricity teams have been attending to repairs and replacing infrastructure with the assistance of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and City Law Enforcement teams.
Mr Mbandezi said while the City remains committed to providing services to all areas in the metro, the safety of members of staff and contractors remains of utmost consideration and the electricity department has repeatedly repaired and replaced the same critical supply infrastructure in Schaapkraal which is unsustainable.
“Due to the ongoing damage to the community infrastructure, the reliability of the area network has been affected as a result.”
He added that the electricity supply has been restored to the affected Schaapkraal residents; however, a small number of the affected residents will be without supply for a longer time, until the damaged infrastructure is replaced entirely and he wasn’t able to give an accurate estimation of restoration because of the intricacy of the work.
“Our Electricity teams are engaging with all relevant stakeholders to discuss the crisis-level vandalism in the area so that longer-term solutions can be established,” said Mr Mbandezi.
Mr Jansen said electrifying Egoli would solve the problem, but only with permission from the property owner.
“The owner is not willing to give permission at this stage. I have been engaging the owner for the last seven years and will again reach out to him. Unfortunately, teams can not enter the area because of the volatility until all enforcement agencies are available.”
He said the City is working on a plan of action.
Casiem Alexander owns the property where the informal settlement is located and the issue has been ongoing for years. Southern Mail attempted to contact Mr Alexander but was unsuccessful. This story will be followed up.
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