Eskom has warned of the effect of theft and vandalism to its infrastructure after power lines at Sibanye-Stillwater mine collapsed this week, causing an outage that the power provider says left mineworkers trapped underground.
According to Eskom‚ the incident happened in Randfontein‚ west of Johannesburg‚ on Monday when miners had problems resurfacing “due to a supply interruption caused by power lines that fell‚ as the integrity of the pylons along these lines was compromised by theft and vandalism”.
But a mine spokesperson said miners were not trapped as a generator kicked in quickly and they could be brought up safely.
Eskom Gauteng said in a statement that Cooke shaft 1/Cooke‚ Cooke shaft 3/Kagiso and Panvlakte/Cooke reduction’s 132 kV lines fell during a storm after the integrity of the pylons along these lines was compromised.
“The pylon structures were weakened by the theft of the tower members and the unstable ground caused by digging around the foundations. Production in the gold extracting mine came to a halt‚ while Eskom worked to restore supply at significantly high costs.
“Theft of tower members leads to the instability and collapse of the pylons that carry high-voltage power lines‚ which then pose a serious safety risk to the public. This criminal practice has an additionally devastating impact on the economy and on Eskom’s ability to sustain the provision of electricity.”
Supply was restored to two shafts‚ Cooke shaft 1/Cooke and Panvlakte/Cooke‚ and the miners were evacuated safely.
“Eskom technicians are still on site and working around the clock to energise Cooke shaft 3/Kagiso‚” the power utility said.
Mashangu Xivambu‚ Eskom’s maintenance and operations senior manager in Gauteng‚ said Eskom “recently reported that vandalism and theft have extended to include pylons whose tower members are often stolen by unscrupulous criminal elements‚ resulting in the steel structures collapsing.
“It is disturbing that this happens a week after we raised concern about incidents of theft and vandalism of pylons‚” he said.
Reached for comment‚ Sibanye spokesperson James Wellsted confirmed the interruption, but said generators kicked in quickly.
“We were able to restore emergency power quite quickly, and our people came out. We’ve got generators at all of our operations‚ so they weren’t trapped‚” he said.
He confirmed that the incident happened at Sibanye’s Cooke operations‚ while the care and maintenance crews were maintaining the infrastructure.
Operations there have been suspended since 2017‚ Wellsted said.
“We’ve had these issues before, but all of our mines have got generators so we can get the people up quickly.”
TimesLIVE
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