South Africa thieves hit traffic lights for Sim cards
15 January BBC
Some 400 high-tech South African traffic lights are out of action
after thieves in Johannesburg stole the mobile phone Sim cards they
contain. The thieves ran up bills amounting to thousands of dollars by
using the stolen cards to make calls. Johannesburg Road Agency (JRA)
said it is investigating the possibility of an "inside job" after only
the Sim card-fitted traffic lights were targeted.
The cards were fitted to notify JRA when the traffic lights were
faulty. JRA believes a syndicate "with links on the inside" is behind
the thefts.
"We have 2,000 major intersections in Johannesburg and only 600 of
those were fitted with the cards," the agency's spokesperson Thulani
Makhubela told the BBC.
"No-one apart from JRA and our supplier knows which intersections
have that system." He described the thefts as "systematic and
co-ordinated".
"The vandalism began with a few lights in November and we repaired
them. Over December the thieves struck again, this time hitting hundreds
more, including the ones we had repaired," he said.
"These people know what they are doing." Chatty thieves Repairing the
faulty traffic lights will cost JRA about 9m rand ($1.3m; £870,000). JRA
has said it has blocked all the stolen Sim cards so that they cannot be
used to make further calls - but this was not before the thieves had run
up huge bills. "One card had a bill of 30,000 rand ($4,500; £2,900) and
we are talking about no less than 150 Sim card bills. Whichever way we
look at it we are talking about a lot of money," said Mr Makhubela.
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