Cable theft disrupts Gautrain

R13... said:
You still need batteries elsewhere:o
Are you suggesting the government is refusing to fight copper theft so that criminals can continue to benefit?
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Where would that be?

Yes. That is what I'm saying. Why else would this be thrown out of parliament for years now?
 
IMHO they should change the status of copper to the same as to gold. So that you need a licence or something to trade in copper.

Smaller quantities of copper can be exempt of said licencing requirements (such as a trinket shop etc).

The resoning behind this is that we are too reliant on copper for telecomms, electricity and a whole lot besides.

This means a lot of people's lives are in the balance should a critical telephone copper cable be stolen, which will prevent people from phoning hospitals/police/fire brigades.

So rather have a few people lose their jobs than a couple of people lose their lives.
 
Was it cable or conductor theft? I assume it was cable cos its quicker to replace than the overhead lines. In that case it was probably at a substation where security needs to be beefed up. Price of tickets will probably go up soon.
 
They would have to do the same for steel too. Remember the chaos caused by those guys who stole a piece of metal off an Eskom pylon? The entire pylon collapsed causing outages to a large section of some area in Durban or KZN somewhere. And then there are those who steal pieces of railway line. How long before they actually steal a piece of 'live' line.
 
The_Librarian said:
IMHO they should change the status of copper to the same as to gold. So that you need a licence or something to trade in copper.
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Thousands of unemployed people make a legitimate living in copper too so it's a tough call. A licence won't stop theft - it will just make it more difficult for legitimate businesses to operate. It certainly won't have an impact on demand, nor on the copper prices themselves so imo that will achieve nothing positive...
 
R13... said:
They would have to do the same for steel too. Remember the chaos caused by those guys who stole a piece of metal off an Eskom pylon? The entire pylon collapsed causing outages to a large section of some area in Durban or KZN somewhere. And then there are those who steal pieces of railway line. How long before they actually steal a piece of 'live' line.
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In most cases the line is live. They short circuit it before stealing.
 
DJ... said:
Thousands of unemployed people make a legitimate living in copper too so it's a tough call. A licence won't stop theft - it will just make it more difficult for legitimate businesses to operate. It certainly won't have an impact on demand, nor on the copper prices themselves so imo that will achieve nothing positive...
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Will it not be easier to find illegal traders if it is regulated?
 
According to the operator, a bus service between Hatfield, Pretoria and Centurion was running as an interim measure. This would double the frequency of the service from 12 minutes to 24 minutes.
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Isn't that half the frequency?
 
Mila said:
Will it not be easier to find illegal traders if it is regulated?
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How so? It's enforcement that achieves this, not regulation. And as it is, enforcement/action is non-existent, so why would that change because of some piece of legislation?
 
Electron1 said:
Regulating an industry does not mean you shut it down. If people are legitimately involved in trading in copper, they should be able to prove where they got it from.
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My limited knowledge of this subject is that this already takes place amongst the above-board dealers. Those trading illegally won't stop now because a piece of paper says it's naughty...
 
DJ... said:
My limited knowledge of this subject is that this already takes place amongst the above-board dealers. Those trading illegally won't stop now because a piece of paper says it's naughty...
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Absolutely agree. We need proper law enforcement in this country where if you break the law, you will be caught and prosecuted...I guess that is a massive subject on it's own.
 
Electron1 said:
Absolutely agree. We need proper law enforcement in this country where if you break the law, you will be caught and prosecuted...I guess that is a massive subject on it's own.
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In South Africa we had just that but that was in the dark ages which we are not even allowed to mention today.
 
SoWhat said:
In South Africa we had just that but that was in the dark ages which we are not even allowed to mention today.
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You can mention it, but sensible people will tell that movement restrictions, torture and detention without trial made things easy.
 
All that we need to do is to make copper trading legal, currently the regulation only favours a certain amount of suppliers - there is your problem. The price of copper is to high with all these regulations, thus people are stealing it.

In any case I don't care much of the Gautrain gets robbed, the Gautrain was bought by stealing from the populace (taxation) and implemented against their will.
 
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