Eskom has been taking advantage of the 21-day lockdown currently in place in South Africa, they have been using this time to not enable load shedding and repair the infrastructure during the low power draw. However, they have faced further problems causing headaches within the company.
On the 3rd April 2020, they released a statement that vandalism and theft in Gauteng against the infrastructure have increased.
Citizens in the area, unfortunately, felt the knock-on effect with power outages. Eskom has already pledged that due to the lower power usage during lockdown there will be no load shedding in place, this, however, does not account for the theft of the network.
Eskom has said “The theft and vandalism of the network and equipment do not only result in outages that cause an inconvenience to the public but also have a significantly negative impact on our operations and efforts to provide the much-needed service to essential service and residents”
Motlhabane Ramashi, Senior Manager for Operations and Maintenance in Gauteng has said that they are working closely with law enforcement and request that communities take ownership of the electricity network by reporting any crimes such as illegal connections to them.
