HUGE COST OF SABOTAGE TO ELECTRICITY COMPANY

Theft, sabotage and illegal connections cost Mozambique’s publicly-owned electricity company, EDM, more than 50 million meticais (1.73 million US dollars at current exchange rate) in 2010, according to a report in Monday’s issue of the Maputo daily, “Noticias”, citing Paulo Fernandes of the EDM Board of Directors. Speaking in the central city of Quelimane, during a meeting of the Inter-Sector Commission on Preventing the Vandalisation of Public Infrastructures, Fernandes said acts of sabotage (usually committed in order to steal cables or metallic parts from pylons) have serious implications for the quality of the service that EDM supplies to its clients.It also obliges the company to mobilise resources to repair the damage at the expense of projects to expand the national grid.Stolen electrical material is sold to scrap metal merchants, who then export it by land and sea. “Controlling this business is difficult, because the people involved in the scrap metal trade are licensed”, said Fernandes.Some days ago, he revealed, the Zimbabwean authorities seized two truck loads of stolen electrical material that had crossed the border at Machipanda. These were trucks that had left Mozambique through an official border post, and nobody had stopped them.Fernandes demanded that the Mozambique Tax Authority (AT), which is responsible for customs inspections at the borders, should be much more rigorous in controlling the goods that are leaving the country. A police spokesman at the meeting confirmed that thieves arrested in connection with the sabotage have turned out to be former employees of EDM (retired workers, or people sacked from the company). The meeting was also attended by representatives of the rail and port company, CFM, the telecommunications company, TDM, the airport company ADM, and the government’s Water Supply Investment and Assets Fund, FIPAG. All suffer from similar problems of theft and sabotage.The stolen material sold to scrap metal merchants is often melted down and turned into pots, pans, bedsteads or even snares for poaching.