By Loyiso Dotwana
It has been called economic sabotage, even akin to treason. The rampant theft of metal – be it copper cables or railway tracks – and resale into a willing market, is having a devastating impact on our country and here in Nelson Mandela Bay.
Government’s draft policy proposals to curb cable and metal theft by tightening-up market regulations, including an initial six-month ban on scrap metal exports, released for public comment last week, are a welcome and solid step in the right direction.
It is estimated that criminals lift 6km of rail tracks daily. The length of cable stolen from Transnet’s rail lines has multiplied tenfold in the last 10 years.
Transnet Freight Rail alone lost more than 1 000km of copper cable used to power electric locomotives in the last financial year, averaging 600 theft and vandalism incidents monthly, and leading to costs of R1.6 billion for security and over R400 million to replace the stolen cables.
In a joint statement last year, the CEOs of Eskom, the Passenger Rail Agency of SA, Transnet Group and Telkom said that theft and vandalism of electricity and ICT cables as well as associated infrastructure was costing their companies R7 billion annually in direct losses.
The knock-on effect to the economy was estimated at R187 billion.
These figures are just the tip of the iceberg, because there are no consolidated figures for the weight, kilometres or rand value of the annual theft of electricity and telecommunications cables, electricity pylons, railway tracks, manhole covers, traffic lights and all manner of vital public infrastructure.
The impact is immense, and it is crippling our economy.
There are the direct costs of added security, replacement of the stolen goods and repairs to the damage caused. Add to that the costs of lost revenue for services that cannot be provided, and losses in export revenue or input for electricity generation.
Just one example – Transnet Freight Rail had to cancel more than 1 100 trains last year, that should have been carrying bulk commodities such as coal and manganese between mines, ports and power stations.
Freight and passenger trains are cancelled, commuters cannot get to work and lose wages, roads are damaged by increased truck traffic because rail is unreliable, companies lose production and increase their waste due to unplanned outages that cause materials and products to be scrapped.
Locally, manufacturers in one of the Bay’s large industrial areas experienced nine power outages last year alone due to cable theft.
Operations at the Fish Water Flats Treatment Works, which handles 64% of the metro’s sewage, were severely disrupted for weeks by cable theft, with potentially catastrophic health and environmental consequences.
Lives are lost – security guards killed in the line of duty by thieves, cable thieves themselves killed in the commission of the crime, innocent lives lost due to electrocution or fires caused by exposed cables.
Thus, aspects of the new measures proposed are welcome – the six-month export ban to buy time to get further measures in place, including an export permit system for semi-finished metal products, an import permit system for furnaces and machinery used to transform stolen metal into legitimate-appearing scrap metal, limiting ports to be used for scrap exports in future.
Tightening up the Second Hand Goods Act will require both buyers and sellers to be registered, and there is a proposed ban on the use of cash in scrap metal dealings, making transactions more traceable.
A proposed multi-agency metals task force and centralised reporting of metals crimes also makes sense, as does the proposal to enhance cross-border cooperation and coordination of anti-smuggling efforts and enforcement.
However, it can also be argued that the proposals do not go far enough to clamp down on theft, vandalism and illegal trade in copper and scrap metal with the urgency required to combat the devastating economic impact.
Government has been talking about declaring copper a precious metal for at least the last 10 years, making the trade in copper more regulated and more difficult for criminals, and the penalties harsher. This idea needs to move beyond talk into action.
Critics of banning the trade in scrap metal argue, correctly, that we already have the necessary laws, that it is enforcement that is lacking.
The number of arrests related to cable theft and illegal trading in stolen metals are unimpressive in relation to the scale of the problem, and the rate of convictions even less so, and the penalties are generally light.
The current legislation and regulations, as well as the proposed tightening-up of the regulatory environment, need strong and effective law enforcement, a stronger drive to prosecute the crimes, and harsher penalties to act as a deterrent. Crime intelligence will need to play a role too, in ensuring that criminal syndicates are not driven further underground.
Taken together, the various measures proposed to create a new metal trading regime are to be welcomed, but whether these are sufficiently bold and decisive, as claimed in the draft policy, remains to be seen.
Loyiso Dotwana is a Civil Engineer and President of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber