Durban — Eight accused who are charged in relation to cable theft and damage to key infrastructure pertaining to cable and copper estimated at R3 million belonging to Transnet, eThekwini and Telkom are expected to apply for bail this week in the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court.
The accused, including two women, made their first appearance in court on Thursday where one of the women stood in the dock alongside her co-accused with a baby strapped to her chest.
This comes as in August the Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition gazetted a proposed draft policy to ban the export of waste, scrap and semi-finished metal products for six months in a bid to crack down on metal theft syndicates.
On Friday, the Daily News’s sister title the Cape Argus reported that Minister Ebrahim Patel announced that he would, from this month, initiate the policy that bars the use of cash when making transactions in scrapyards.
The proposed policy seeks to shift from policing thousands of locations to focusing on distribution networks.
“We believe from research done, if we can disrupt those networks, if we can increase the cost on the syndicate and if can ensure that those networks don’t operate properly, we can begin to win the battle against theft of metal and copper cable,” said Patel during a presentation to the Parliamentary portfolio committee on trade and industry on the proposed policy.
He explained that the shift was to focus on the logistics of scrap metal trading. In his presentation, he said research had shown that metal theft was a global problem that many countries faced. He said a survey undertaken on the international restrictions on the sale of scrap metal.
“The research provides case studies and goes into detail on Kenya where they banned scrap metal and India where they put in a significant amount on export tax.”
Meanwhile, last week three suspects were arrested and detained at the Umkomaas SAPS after being found with 23 rolls of copper cable valued at R1 million, all of which belonged to the eThekwini Municipality.
At the time IOL reported that one of the three suspects is a contractor for the eThekwini Municipality, working with the electricity department.
Daily News