Editorial - Pilfering not worth the shame

In case people have not noticed it, every Sunday all three English language newspapers in Cebu carry public apologies by persons found to have pilfered electricity in violation of RA 7832 or the Anti-Electricity and Electric Transmission Lines/Materials Pilferage Act of 1994.

It is not known whether the public apologies extinguish the criminal liabilities of the persons involved as part of an arrangement with the offended party, the Visayan Electric Company. The public apologies come with promises not to pilfer electricity again.

This has nothing to do with such arrangements, however, if indeed there are between the parties. That is between the two of them. What we find interesting and striking, though, is the sheer number of public apologies that have been published.

Virtually all English language newspapers in Cebu have been carrying these paid public apologies for many months already, with no less than four different apologetic persons named by each newspaper every Sunday.

That means that at the very least, there are a dozen persons asking public forgiveness for their transgressions every Sunday (it is not clear if the choice of day has anything to do with religion). And if this has been going on for months, you can just do the math.

The eye-opener is that we never realized there were that many electricity pilferers in our midst. That some of the pilferers are actually persons we have rubbed elbows with at one time or another is an even greater eye-opener.

No, eye-opener may not be the appropriate term to use in this regard. Perhaps shock is the word to use (especially since electricity is the issue at hand). For this thing is indeed very shocking.

Not only is the number of pilferers so unexpected, but Mr. so-and-so or Mrs. this-or-that a pilferer? Yet there they are, people from all walks of life, persons known or unknown to us, humiliating themselves for acts they probably never expected to get caught.

Maybe it is a matter of perception, but there is something about pilfering electricity that makes the act so rotten cheap that to get caught and then made to publicly apologize for it and get stigmatized forever just doesn’t make pilfering worth it.