Cable theft sixth time around

Not once but six times.

This is the number of times the power cable near Elaine Janse van Vuuren’s house in Ruimsig has been stolen.

“Criminals have all the time in the world as the police conveniently don’t patrol our area anymore. We have so many pictures of where they dug holes. What gets me is why can’t City Power dig deeper holes.” Janse van Vuuren said.

A total of 10 to 12m of cable is stolen at a time. “A cable would perhaps be stolen on a Thursday. By Saturday morning it is stolen again. Our area is targeted constantly. When our dogs bark we know the cables are being stolen.”

“One morning around 1am my mother woke me up to show me that the power in the house was slowly going off phase by phase,” she said. “I phoned the police but they took too long as usual. So my mother and fiancé got in the car and went around the block.

“Luckily there was another car driving in front of them so they could go past the section where thieves always steal the cable. We must have scared them off, but as expected they came back the following morning.” The police eventually arrived at 3am to inform the family the thieves had gone. “Something we already knew,” she added.

According to Janse van Vuuren, City Power told her it would be too expensive to cover cables with cement. “Why not rather spend money on preventing cable theft?

“We constantly do not know whether we will have power the next day,” she lamented. City Power had not responded and Honeydew police spokesperson Warrant Officer Karen Jacobs could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press.