
A truck driver was arrested for allegedly stealing coal destined for Eskom’s Arnot power station in Mpumalanga and selling it for R6 000.
On Saturday, Eskom’s security team noticed a truck that was meant to deliver coal to the station going to a coal yard in Middelburg. It left after about an hour, and drove to Arnot.
“On arrival at Arnot power station, the truck joined the queue to offload coal. The Eskom Group Security Investigations team checked and discovered that the coal due to be offloaded was indeed discarded coal containing stones which confirmed the suspected coal swapping witnessed earlier at the Middleburg coal yard,” the utility said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The driver of the truck was questioned and he confessed that he had sold the coal… for R6 000.” He was subsequently arrested by the Hawks.
“The delivery of poor-quality coal often leads to unit breakdowns and cannot be tolerated. We hope the perpetrator, once convicted, faces the harshest possible sentence which shall serve as a deterrent to others,” Botse Sikhwitshi, the acting general manager for security at Eskom, said in a statement.
READ | Convict gets 10 years behind bars for tampering with Eskom infrastructure
Last week, the utility said that a man accused of tampering with critical Eskom infrastructure was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He is one of two who were arrested in February 2022 on suspicion of stealing copper bars and installed copper at a Matla substation.
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