Power cable thieves face stiff penalties

The Department of Energy (DOE) will submit to Congress soon a proposal to amend Republic Act 7832, otherwise known as the Anti-Pilferage Law to put an end to power outages brought about by violations of this law.

"We will be submitting our proposal to Congress’ committees on energy to increase the penalty for those violating the provisions of RA 7832," Energy Secretary Vincent Perez said.

At present, the law only fines violators a maximum of P10,000.

He said they propose to increase the penalty to as much P5 million. "We want it to be substantial so that the violators will think twice before committing the crime," he added.

Last Dec. 30, a joint team from the Department of Justice, Philippine National Police and National Bureau of Investigation apprehended at least three suspected cable thieves.

"The cables of the National Power Corp. (Napocor) are sold at about P1,500 to P2,500 per ton," he said.

Napocor loses about P10 million per hour of power outage. In November last year, it lost about P100 million.

"One of the effective ways to stop these cable stealers is to put in place a legislative measure," he said.

Since President Arroyo took office in January 2001, the Napocor had recorded four major power failures, at least two of which were Luzon-wide blackouts.

Napocor officials claimed that these four power outages were triggered by different factors. The blackout, sometime middle of 2001, was caused by cable thieves. The Nov. 4 power failure was brought about by the shutdown of Sual plant. The last power outage in Jan. 21 (was reportedly by a bulldozer that bumped into a transmission line in Tayabas, Quezon.

An investigating team was created to look into the real cause of the last Luzon-wide system failure and is expected to come up with their findings next week.

Another way of preventing such an occurrence, Perez said, is to fasttrack the privatization of Napocor so that new investors will be able to pour in more capital to improve the facilities of the power firm.

He said upgrading the transmission facilities of Napocor would require about $1 billion in investments in the next five years.

The energy chief said they would probably start the pre-marketing of the transmission assets of Napocor by the first two quarters of this year. The government expects to raise about $1.5 billion proceeds in the process.