Protect your power: City attends to vandalised energy infrastructure in Lavender Hill
05 December 2024
The City’s Energy teams are attending to vandalised energy infrastructure across the city and the teams are prioritising all vandalised streetlights as a matter of urgency. Between 6 November 2024 and 19 November 2024, the City attended to 3 405 streetlight service requests across the metro.
The City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Alderman Xanthea Limberg, recently joined electricity teams in Lavender Hill as they attended to streetlight service requests. Earlier in the year, the City launched a streetlight initiative, which focuses on vandalised infrastructure, and damage from theft, and expediting repair turnaround times across the metro.
‘Lavender Hill, and the majority of the City’s Area South, continues to be hit hard by energy vandals and thieves. Teams often have to return to the area soon after completing repairs to fix the same infrastructure. It is unfortunate that we are seeing many repeat streetlight vandalism cases in areas across the city. This directly impacts public safety and security and also significantly impacts the City’s finances. These acts of destruction divert resources from essential services and hinders the City’s efforts to improve the lives of residents in our communities. Repair teams are often escorted by private security, which increases the cost of repairs.
‘It is always surprising to see the extent of the destruction these criminals are capable of and the great impact it has on entire electrical grids. We are pleased to see our operational interventions paying off. Of course, more can be done and we are working hard to ensure vandalism and theft are lessened as much as possible. We call on the public for their support in reporting illegal activities to the City and the South African Police Service (SAPS). These reports from community members help us to identify new criminal trends and we urge residents to continue assisting us in stopping this scourge.
‘Recently, over two weeks, between 6 November and 19 November 2024 we attended to more than 3 400 streetlight requests, the majority of them within Area South, and we will not stop attending to many more over the days and weeks to come,’ said Alderman Limberg.
The City is urging residents to join us in combatting streetlight theft and vandalism. By reporting it to the City, we can create safer and brighter communities.
Let’s ACT: Protect Your Power
Report suspicious behaviour to the City’s Public Emergency Communication Centre: 021 480 7700
End Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
