Piped natural gas reticulator Egoli Gas is seeking the help of utility City Power to put a stop to vandalism on the site adjoining its Cottesloe facility, which it says is creating concern for the company and the community, as it is endangering Egoli Gas employees on site and people in the surrounding residential area.

“At the back of our premises, is an abandoned power generation site that belongs to City Power. We have witnessed damaging acts of vandalism resulting in costly property damage and have written numerous emails to inform City Power about the vandalism of their property,” says Egoli MD Nic de Waal.

Egoli is calling on City Power to engage and assist it in combating this vandalism.

“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.”

Egoli says it has embarked on efforts to stop looters from stripping away at the City Power building.

On August 1, the company caught six looters loading stolen material in a truck. The police, who were called to the scene, also found firearms and drugs in their possession. Between August 1 and 22, the company caught four more looters at the site, adds De Waal.

“Our management has 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,” he says.

Egoli has also sent its security officers, along with a canine squad, to check and guard the site. This has not been successful in preventing the looters from stripping the place.

The organisation has also engaged with the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits)  management team to alert them that the looters have broken their fence and were using that entryway to access the power generation site.

As a result, Egoli has joined hands with the Wits security for the past three weeks to attend to the problem, De Waal adds.

Engineering News has reached out to City Power for comment.