Zimpapers Logo

Patrick Chitumba, [email protected]

SEVERAL homes in Gweru’s Mkoba suburb, including Mkoba Teachers’ College, were plunged into darkness after suspected thieves stole copper cables.

The affected areas are Mkoba 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10, 11 and 13. The country has of late been hit by a series of power outages mostly due to copper cable theft.

The Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) is now in the process of replacing copper cables with aluminium cables. When a Chronicle news crew visited two vandalised sites in Mkoba 1 and 9 yesterday morning, some of the overhead cables were still lying on the ground.

Residents who spoke to the Chronicle said they suspected thieves took advantage of load shedding to steal copper cables.

“It was around 3am on Tuesday when the lights went off and I suspected it was loading shedding. However, I realised that some transformers had been vandalised later that morning,” said Mrs Mejury Sibanda of Mkoba 9.

Acting ZETDC Southern Region general manager, Engineer Wonder Mangwanda, confirmed the incident, saying they are working on sourcing replacement cables.

“There was an attempt to steal a cable from the substation on Wednesday so it looks like they vandalised another section in one of the areas. We could not identify the area since it was dark, but our team is going back,” he said.

Eng Mangwanda said last week, the landing span of three feeders from the Mkoba substation was vandalised during load shedding resulting in 70 percent of Mkoba suburbs going without power.

“The feeders were vandalised outside the substation where security sensors are not available. They stole copper conductors worth US$4 320. A report has been made to the police,” he said.

The latest development comes after the region lost infrastructure worth US$22 500 between January and March.

Vandalism and theft of electricity infrastructure have also resulted in increased faults leading to prolonged power outages.

In the first quarter, the region, especially in the Midlands province, witnessed 36 cases of vandalism of infrastructure comprising transformers, multi-core cables, copper conductors and copper cables

Gweru and Kwekwe each reported 14 cases, Zvishavane and Mvuma had two each and Chivhu had four.

Last year, 156 cases involving vandalism of ZETDC property worth US$279 000 were recorded, including meter bypasses.

Eng Mangwanda said the region’s inability to implement new projects is being hampered by vandalism of electricity infrastructure as available funds are being directed towards replacing vandalised equipment.

He said the development has weighed heavily on power supply causing unplanned outages.

“Theft and vandalism of electricity infrastructure has resulted in increased faults leading to frequent and long power outages that some clients perceive to be load shedding. Power supply is greatly being compromised by increased cases of theft and vandalism,” said Eng Mangwanda.

ZETDC is seeking a review of the sentence for individuals convicted of stealing power cables and transformers from 10 years to 30 years to curb the vice that is prejudicing Zesa Holdings of more than US$2 million annually.

The power utility requires more than US$14 million to procure intruder detection gadgets to fight the scourge that continues to bleed the power utility.