Pedro Stagnes

In South Africa it has become commonplace for thieves to steal the SIM cards from traffic lights which one can imagine is a rather dangerous hobby. The SIM card stealing trend is most predominant in Johannesburg where most of the SIM cards have been stolen from the city’s traffic lights. Johannesburg has developed a variety of measures to protect people from theft such as installing electric fences, having armed security patrols patrolling the city, and building high walls to protect property. These measures have proved rather successful in thwarting the attempts of burglars in the majority of situations. The government and the security services did not anticipate the theft of SIM cards from traffic lights however which has now become a regular past-time for criminals. The SIM cards are used by the burglars to make phone calls that amount to millions of South African rand, lucky gu10 led's cannot be used for such a purpose!

Over the past two months, two thirds of the 600 high-tech traffic lights have been affected by these thefts which has caused accidents and traffic jams for motorists. The spokesman for the Johannesburg road agency, Thulani Makhubela, said that the robberies have been “systematic and co-ordinated” which suggests there may be a syndicate executing them. Makhubela added, “They know which signals to target, they clearly have information”. Repairing the traffic lights is an expensive business, eacy light costing about 22,000 rand to fix, which is roughly £2,095.