It looks unsightly, but in an attempt to prevent cable thieves from again plundering the copper at the Arboretum (canal) robots on the John Ross Parkway, engineers have poured a huge concrete slab over the cable trench.
15 OCTOBER
Cable thieves cut robots
THE traffic lights at the Arboretum (canal) intersection of the John Ross Parkway were out of order on Monday morning after thieves stole the copper cable around sunrise.
‘I’m amazed that nobody saw or reported this,’ said an angry Andrew Payton, Senior Technical Assistant at the City of uMhlathuze.
‘The culprits dug a large trench, lifted concrete placed over the cables and then cut the cable – in full view of passing motorists just metres away.
‘It must have taken quite some time.
‘The repair bill will be around R30 000 and I doubt they will even get R30 for the copper.
‘We have visited all the scrap metal dealers, shown the cables and explained the situation, yet these people always find willing buyers.
‘Now we are left with an uncontrolled and extremely dangerous intersection where lives could be lost.’
Meanwhile, Payton said the outage over the weekend of the newly-installed eSikhaleni robots were not because of cable theft.
‘The big veld fires that raged on Friday caused damage to one of the poles carrying a step-down transformer, which resulted in power failure at the intersection.’
PHOTOS: DAVE SAVIDES
Its really sad that the municipality does such a great job sorting out the faulty robots throught out the city, but only to have people who have no brains to steal cables and put thousands of lives at risk, its becoming such a norm that bystanders don’t even bother to report this criminals, rather they take photos and share with their families and friends “oh look how these guys steal cables in broad daylight”
People driving by most likely would not suspect anything. With all the construction going on and the various contractors having different clothing people driving by must have thought it was normal maintanance/instalation. Most people mind their own business, too stressed, rushed and what not to play observer all day long.
My question is since this is a common occurrence in this area is why not install CCTV at robots. No money? Not an excuse, steal less or manage funds better. As for traffic officers, maybe they need to get out of bed before 10H00 am and start patrols earlier.
Perhaps leave the comfort of the shady tree and start doing some real work.
The Nelson Mandela Metro in Port Elizabeth and I think all other metro’s are faced with the same problem regarding overhead/underground copper cable theft. However they took it one step further by acquiring a mobile surveillance vehicle, the first and only one built and deployed in South Africa at the moment in order to address these type off problems. Indeed this technology has been deployed successfully in a very short period off time and are now also been deployed in other operation together with our Police where incidents off housebreaking robbery and stock-theft cases are frequently been reported.The vehicle is fitted with a infrared thermal camera with a range off 5 kilometers in line off sight together with rangefinder.They should try and invest in this technology.