South African wireless traffic lights stolen by SIM-card thieves
The city of Johannesburg had a great idea to make traffic move more smoothly in the city: install wirelessly activated traffic lights; but this is South Africa, so it did not take more than a few weeks for thieves to steal the SIM cards from 400 out of the 600 traffic lights installed; now the city does not have the fancy lights — and it pays thousands of rand on phone calls the thieves subsequently make using the snaffled SIMs
In South Africa, one of the major costs associated with doing business is crime. Here is one example: The Johannesburg Road Agency is in talks with suppliers to try and stop thieves targeting its shiny new traffic lights for the SIM cards they contain.
John Oates writes that the agency has been forking out thousands of rand on phone calls the thieves subsequently make using the snaffled SIMs.
Thulani Makhubela, spokesman for the JRA, said: “The JRA has been severely affected with this crime and this now means we have to fork out more money on something that we should not have spent a cent on.”
Makhubela said the agency was now cancelling the SIMs stolen from the GPRS units inside some of the traffic lights and working with Johannesburg police to stop the traffic light thefts. Ordinary lights have not been targeted by the gangs — although there were some thefts of traffic light poles last year for their scrap value.
The spokesman said the JRA was also in talks with suppliers to make the lights’ components more secure.
He told the Guardian the attacks were “systematic and coordinated” and thieves knew which lights to attack and “clearly have information.”
Four hundred out of 600 SIM-equipped traffic lights have been hit in the last three months and it will cost R8.8m (£838,000) to replace missing components and repair them.
