The Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) has fingered a gang that is linked to the theft of transformers and other metal-based materials from its Sophia depot. The stolen articles are believed to be vandalized and copper and other metals removed and sold in the scrap industry.
“We have discovered the whole operation. We have identified the group and we know who the individuals are. They are on the run from the police and some of them have actually abandoned their homes at Sophia,” GPL General Manager Bharrat Dindyal told Stabroek Business earlier.
The disclosure came several weeks after a number of GPL transformers were removed
from the Company’s Sophia depot. Dindyal told Stabroek Business that the Company had investigated the transformer thefts and had ruled out employee complicity. He said, however, that persons who are not staff but who are known to the company are believed to have been involved in the thefts. He declined to say whether his response implicated security guards contracted to guard the Sophia site.
However, Dindyal conceded that there have been cases in which company employees had become implicated in dishonest acts. “In some cases we have received information that persons are seeking our materials. The line crews are, maybe, driving up to scrap metal dealers and saying that they have pieces of ends of wire for sale. Cases of dishonesty have been investigated and we have actually dismissed employees and contractors,” Dindyal said.
Dindyal said that in the case of the transformers discovered earlier this year on the premises of a person linked to the scrap metal industry a report had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Dindyal said that thefts are a matter of frustration to the GPL given the high cost of materials associated with electricity generation.
According to Dindyal the current cost of transformers is US$5,000.00 each and when these are stolen the aluminium parts are disposed of since it is only the copper that they are after. He said GPL’s storage depot at Sophia is subject to raids by metal thieves who access the area from the adjacent property by cutting through the chain link fencing. He said that the company had discovered an area in Sophia where several vandalized pieces of GPL equipment had been found. He disclosed that GPL is currently in the process of clearing the bush in that area that serves to hide the stolen articles.
GPL along with GT&T and GWI have suffered millions of dollars in losses resulting from metal theft. In 2007 aggressive lobbying by the three utility companies led to a clampdown on the scrap metal industry that saw government halt the export of scrap metal. While the scrap industry has responded by saying that it wishes to collaborate with the utility companies to help stamp out metal theft, Dindyal told Stabroek Business that evidence of complicity by scrap dealers in metal theft meant that their sincerity in stamping out the practice had to be demonstrated through their actions rather than in promises.
