THE Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL), saying it has adopted a zero-tolerance approach to electricity theft, has made it clear that culprits caught would be handed over to law enforcement officials.GPL Loss Reduction Division Director Parsram Persaud told the Guyana Chronicle that, at the end of 2015, electricity theft accounted for approximately 14 per cent of the total energy generated by the company.

Electricity theft is done mainly by two groups: persons who are not customers of GPL even though they are users of electricity (unmetered and illegal), and those who are stealing electricity by tampering with, or by-passing, their meters. Some culprits, mainly in unregularised areas, hook up to GPL’s network directly.

Persaud noted that GPL does raids every month, but the recent rainy season has caused the company to do only four raids in different areas during this month.

Persaud said that, in many cases, GPL personnel find there is no GPL network in some areas (unregularised), but persons have electricity in their homes. Those persons access electricity by connecting illegal wires, even across trenches, to nearby areas with GPL networks.

He said that thus far for this year, 41 persons have been arrested for electricity theft.
During the period 2007/2016, some 3,621 persons were arrested for electricity theft, most of whose matters are before the courts.
Some 630 persons have thus far been convicted, but there were only two convictions last year.

According to Persaud, stealing of electricity happens indiscriminately. He pointed out that both the ordinary man and wealthy people managing high-end businesses have been caught in the act of stealing electricity. Some metered GPL customers have become very creative, and are finding ways to tamper with their meters.

GPL has intensified its Loss Reduction Programme, and according to Persaud, it is just a matter of time before those persons are caught and handed over to the police.