Over 1,300 Berbicians caught stealing electricity in 2014 -GPL

By Leon Suseran
Over 1,300 Berbicians were caught by the Guyana Power & Light Inc. (GPL) stealing electricity last year.

Mr. Phyalyanjee Nandkumar

Most of them were placed before the courts, said Loss Reduction Manager, Mr. Phyalyanjee Nandkumar, at the company’s Berbice office.
Tampering with meters; bypassing the network and illegal diversions were just a few methods that Berbicians used to steal electricity. Over 350 cases alone dealt with tampering of meters, he added. Once you are caught stealing electricity, you are arrested.
The majority of the cases had persons receiving a non-custodial sentence; some were given a suspended sentence. However, if they commit any other crime in the future, they would head straight to prison for one year.
Numerous large companies, too, were caught stealing electricity in Berbice last year. Nandkumar said that these companies were prosecuted and back- billed. “If they don’t pay, no power, and the penalty now is high for electricity theft.”
Currently, the penalty for stealing electricity is one year imprisonment and a minimum of $500,000 fine. Nandkumar also said that the company won a lot of the cases that were brought before the courts. Many others were dismissed due to perpetrators not attending court. “They leave the location….so those cases (were) lost.”
The official noted that arrest warrants have been issued for several persons caught stealing electricity and who seem to be eluding the law. “They can be picked up anytime; never mind the case is struck out…The arrest warrant is still valid, because you didn’t attend court.”
He did state, though, that the court process is a bit slow. It is not dealing with the defaulters in the expeditious manner it should. “But we hope to improve it in 2015.”
The Loss Reduction Manager also said that customers are inventing newer methods of stealing electricity. They are also coming up with ways to steal electricity from the pre- paid metering system and GPL is working to improve that situation, he added.
The company is looking carefully at customers who have not purchased credit for electricity meters for the past two months. “And we are picking up a lot of straight connections— Probably the crew did it and it’s not in the system. But we would back-bill (the user) and charge them.”
“Probably, customers run out of credit; they get somebody to give them a straight connection, so the system picks it up that this customer did not buy credit for two or three months….so we remove the meter and back-bill them because it’s a bypass.”
Nandkumar is urging pre- paid customers to not let credit run out, because they are saving themselves money as well as inconvenience. If a pre- paid customer runs out of credit, the meter will shut down and a fee of $12,000 would be charged to re-activate the meter. “When the credit finishes, it (the meter) shuts down— there’s a process to link the meter back,” he stated.
If tenants wish to move out of buildings, he urged landlords to not let tenants leave with the meter. “The meter can’t work, because there is not another keypad to synchronize …the landlord and tenant should sort it out— the keypad can remain on the building in case someone else wants to rent the building.”
He noted, too, that if a meter is found to be tampered with, an instrument is used to test the meter for accuracy. If over 90 per cent of accuracy is found on the meter, the customer will not be prosecuted, “but the ones below 90 per cent (accuracy), we arrest, back bill and prosecute.”
As long as customers are found with a bypass, they are automatically arrested and prosecuted.
Nationally, the losses from stealing electricity from the power grid he said, is 31 per cent. The company, he said, loses over $2B in electricity theft on an annual basis.
Nandkumar described 2014 as a “very good year” for loss reduction in East and West Berbice. The widespread campaign to unearth illegal connections helped the company to reduce its losses, he stated.
Angoy’s Avenue, one of Guyana’s largest squatter settlements, with over 4,000 residents, had the largest amount of electricity theft in Berbice, with over 99 per cent of customers stealing current. However, this amount has been reduced to 90 per cent, with the ongoing electrification drive in that housing scheme. The figure will reduce further, he noted.
Those illegal connections were removed by the company’s loss reduction teams which were accompanied by police officers. “As we find our illegal connections, the police work with us and we do our prosecutions and arrests,” he revealed.
“My staff is working and they are supportive,” he mentioned. He cautioned customers to not allow any sort of corruption, in terms of bribing GPL crew members into establishing illegal connections on their premises. “
Nandkumar therefore urged customers in Berbice and Guyana as a whole, to stop stealing electricity and also report these cases promptly.
“Now when your neighbour is stealing electricity, it’s like you are paying for them; because a lot of people are complaining that their neighbours are stealing (electricity) while their bills are high.”
“We are working furiously and we want to reduce these losses to zero. If it happens, it will be excellent for Guyana and GPL, because at the end of the day, when customers steal, the State loses and taxpayers lose too,” he added.
While the electricity theft crew needs a bit more resources, the official said that the company is doing the best it could to eradicate electricity theft in Berbice.
“We know fuel prices are down, but the costs are still high because we buy fuel at high prices…so stop stealing and probably one day, your bills will go down— support our drive to stop electricity theft. If you know your neighbour is stealing, please report to us and it would be confidential.”