The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and State-owned Eskom have signed an agreement that formalises interaction between the organisations in the security domain, by establishing a standing security subcommittee to identify and deal with security risks.

The electricity provider has recently been “plagued” by cable theft and the vandalism of its substations, particularly on the East Rand of Johannesburg.

Germiston metro spokesperson Themba Gadebe recently revealed to the media that the area had, in the past three months, experienced in excess of 15 outages, caused mostly by third-party interference, such as attempted theft and vandalism.

Eskom divisional executive of security Brigadier-General Tebogo Rakau told Engineering News Online during a press briefing on Monday that Gauteng had the highest concentration of substation vandalism as “most of the scrap dealers that buy the stolen copper are in or around the province”, but added that such incidents were not confined to Gauteng.

“In the North West province, particularly Klerksdorp, we have experienced vandalism at a substation to such an extent that you could not even pinpoint that there was a substation,” he said, noting that security measures that had already been in place were “no match” for the armed gang of more than 50 people who invaded it.

Unmitigated, these security risks are having a significant financial impact on Eskom’s business.

“Our strategy is to implement mitigating factors around our substations based on risk assessment . . . we need to come up with appropriate measures,” Rakau highlighted, noting that early-warning systems could be a possible solution.

“Through our association with the CSIR, we hope to come up with the perfect solution to tackle this problem,” he said.

Other focus areas of the agreement will include geographical information systems, cyber security, network/energy crimes and security technologies and systems.

The security agreement follows an agreement signed in May, where the two parties formalised a collaborative relationship to support Eskom’s strategic and operational needs.

CSIR group executive: strategic alliances and communications Dr Rachel Chikwamba added that the establishment of the security subcommittee would result in the relevant expertise being applied to design and put robust solutions in place.

“We will create a dynamic programme that will ensure optimal use of all the multidisciplinary capabilities within the CSIR but also across the National System of Innovation,” she said, noting that the aim of the agreement was to provide a framework to govern the strategic collaboration.