The City of Johannesburg has recovered R107-million following the arrest of 22 people allegedly involved in corruption, collusion, fraud and tampering with the city’s electricity systems, which had ultimately cost the city R200-million in lost revenue.

Executive mayor Parks Tau told members of the media attending a briefing at the City of Johannesburg’s municipal offices, in Braamfontein, last week, that the remaining R93-million in lost revenue had been accounted for on the city’s balance sheet and that ten more arrests would be made in the next two weeks.

Ongoing investigations had identified at least 30 large power users in Johannesburg as having defrauded the city.

Meanwhile, of those already arrested, two were City Power employees and two City of Johan-nesburg employees. External contractors and members of the public were also discovered to have participated in criminal activities resulting in revenue losses.

In the last two weeks, an additional 61 cases of illegal activity within the city been established, adding to the 48 cases under investigation.

Tau revealed that the city was receiving weekly updates from City Power on illegal activities and was also working closely with the National Prosecuting Authority, the Hawks, and the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department in the investigation.

He stressed that the city would continue to pursue offenders and safeguard taxpayers’ funds, and added that stringent security measures were being implemented to prevent criminal activities at the city’s power stations and substations.

“The city is in the process of instal- ling integrated and biometric security systems to manage and monitor access into power stations and substations. Pylon vibrations monitoring systems that detect vandalism are also being installed at substations, which are being monitored 24/7,” he said.

He assured the public that many power outages in the city were as a result of criminal activities and not owing to load-shedding, pointing out that an average of 32% of all power outages each month occurred as a result of theft and vandalism.

Further, 16% of power outages were caused by damage done by third parties and 12% related to stolen cables and illegal connec- tions.