Egoli Gas’ plight to stop public vandalism at one of City Power’s sites
Vandalism is one of South Africa’s most problematic common-law crimes. Egoli Gas, a natural gas reticulation company, has been witness to damaging acts of vandalism which have seen costly property damage to the City Power site in at the back of Egoli Gas’ Cottesloe facility, This has created much concern for the gas company and the greater community.
“At the back of our premises, is an abandoned power generation site that belongs to City Power. We have written numerous emails to inform City Power about the vandalism of their property. Egoli Gas is in dire need of a joint effort with City Power to put a stop to the vandalism on the site adjoining ours. It is not only destroying 100 million Rands of City Power property, but it is endangering Egoli Gas employees on site, as well as the surrounding residential area,” explains Egoli Gas MD, Nic de Waal.
Nic reiterates that Egoli Gas has embarked on many efforts to stop looters from stripping away at the City Power building: “Our management have reached out to the different offices and managers at City Power since the vandalism began, to inform them that we found their unsecured site full of looters. To date, there has been no action or response from the organisation to protect their assets.”
To add to their efforts, Egoli Gas has sent their security officers, along with the K9 Squad, to check and guard the site. This has not been successful in preventing the looters from stripping the place. The organisation went as far as engaging with the University of the Witwatersrand management team to alert them that the looters have broken their fence and use that entryway to access the power generation site. As a result, Egoli Gas has joined hands with the Wits security for the past three weeks, to attend to the problem.
“On the 1st of August 2022, we caught six looters loading looted material in a truck. The SAPS, who we called to the scene, also found firearms and drugs in their possession. Since these arrests, we caught four more looters between the 1st and the 22nd of August 2022,” adds Nic.
Egoli Gas is calling out to City Power to engage and assist them in combating this vandalism crisis. “We need to come up with a solution because we also have heritage buildings on site. We cannot afford for these looters to start stripping these buildings. These incidents of malicious damage to property must come to a stop, and we need all relevant powers to come to the party.”
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