By Umamah Bakharia

Fourteen people, including security personnel and a scrap dealer, have been arrested for cable theft from Eskom.

A team comprising of Eskom, the SAPS and the Hawks’ Serious Organised Crime Unit swoop on the cable theft syndicate in Mpumalanga yesterday. A large volume of stolen cables, comprising aluminium and copper, were found stored on several premises.

Radio Islam discusses this further Eskom security Advocate, Karen Pillay.

“A lot of intensive investigation [was conducted] from our [Eskom] side and it necessitated that we actually put in multi-discipline teams together due to the fact that we had a spate of incidents in the past week on this specific line,” says Pillay.

She adds that the involvement of scrap metal dealers assisted Eskom in understanding the criminal network.

Eskom, however, says that they had vetted the security personnel that they employ but this did not the criminal activity that occurred at their site.

“The reality is crime knows no boundaries and it becomes so lucrative for individuals that you find these individuals that are tempted by these criminal networks,” says Pillay.

She adds that one of the issues for the theft might be because Eskom has a high turnover of staff and security personnel that exposes them to the risk of crime.

Eskom says theft and vandalism to their infrastructure has an effect on the national grid.

“It certainly does place pressure on an already constraint network, it forces our teams to actually balance its work and redirect loads etc.,” says Pillay.

She adds that this has been another challenge Eskom has been facing with the causes of loadhsedding.