The Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) has cautioned the general public against power theft, emphasizing that the act is a major driver of commercial loses at the LEC.
Speaking during the Ministry of Information’s regular press briefing on Thursday, November 10, 2022, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC), Monie R. Captan, said power theft is causing the entity serious problem in providing adequate services to its customers around the country, and that electricity is key to development.
According to Captan, the goal of the government is to ensure that every citizen has access to electricity, and not to deprive anyone the right to electricity; as such, he was urging citizens to take electricity seriously.
He disclosed that Liberia recently signed a power purchase agreement for 27 additional megawatts with CI Energies of Ivory coast, and that there is 192% increase in the amount of energy that is available to supply the country, which will go a long way in meeting the challenges that was faced during the last dry season.
“I can assure you that we’re not going to have the same situation from last dry season, but we all need to do our part to ensure that this is sustainable when we all pay our bills,” Captan said.
He said out of all the electricity being produced, power theft is on the increase, and is not good for the country, “This is not good citizenship, at the end of the day what you are doing, stealing electricity, is that you are endangering the supply of electricity. You are also keeping the cost of electricity high because at the end somebody will have to pay for the electricity that has been stolen,” LEC’s CEO Captan stated.
He further observed that the Anti-Power Theft Taskforce is not intended to intimidate the Liberian people but to make all of those who are not legal customers to be legal customers by appealing to the public to be patient with LEC and stop hiring people in the communities, who are not LEC employees, to climb the pole.
“I am asking the public to be patient with LEC. We have 185,000 customers, 250 vehicles. Assuming that 500 persons call a day, we wouldn’t be able to attend to everyone. Because people are not patient they hire people in the neighborhood to climb the pole; it causes problem because they are not authorized to do so,” CEO Captan explained.
“We are not interested in arresting ordinary people. We will give the ordinary people meter so they, too, can’t be harassed by people coming to them that they are stealing current. We want them to be customers.
“Warning to those who are using LEC to make business by selling the LEC power; those are the people we are going after,” Captan cautioned.
“We have to change this attitude. It’s a new day and it must be a new day because we should not be suffering for electricity the way we are. If we all do our part it will be like the old days.
“If you see somebody on the pole without an ID card, stop them as a community. The only way we can survive is if the community takes responsibility for their transformers,” Captan asserted.