Since April 1 last year, 2,147 criminal cases related to Eskom have been opened, of which 1,586 are under investigation and 126 arrests have been made.
These are the figures released by Electricity Minister Kgosincho Ramukjuba in a Monday morning briefing on progress on security issues related to the implementation of the Energy Action Plan.
“This is incremental but meaningful progress,” he said, adding that there is also an ongoing focus on fraud, corruption and security within Eskom.
Police Minister Becky Seeley was due to attend the briefing, but was cut short due to other emergency commitments.
Ramukjoba said an operational investigation unit has been integrated within Eskom, tasked with addressing problems within power plants and within the coal yards through regular visits.
“We’re looking at creating the anatomy of a criminal operation by looking at sources. We’ve been checking second-hand dealers and we’ll explain that later. At this point, we’ve conducted 15,043 compliance inspections, and we’re cutting syndicate arteries,” estimating the physical recovery value of stolen property at “what Approximately 94 million rand.