Mr. Godwin Amenuvor, Maintenance Engineer of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) on Wednesday bemoaned the rampant stealing and destruction of electric poles and circuits as the practice undermines the power distribution in the country. He stated that nation-wide criminal activity amounts to sabotage adding that replacing destroyed lines or poles leads to loss of revenue to the country. Mr. Amenuvor said this when the ECG took pressmen to inspect a pole at Tsaado which had been cut down. He said on 15th October, 2010, the Company received a report that the line called "Teshie-Nungua1" which evacuates power from the Burma-Camp main station to the Teshie-Nungua main station had failed. He explained that when the ECG patrolled the lines in the area, they found that a pole had been cut down the previous day thus causing the outage. They also found an abandoned carpenter's saw and chain saw which had apparently been used to cut down the pole as well as a pair of slippers and a T-Shirt. The culprits, he said, had intended to cut the cables which contain aluminium conductors measuring 265 millimetres square in width and 5.8 kilometres in length, but fled when the pole fell and presumably injured one of them since there was power in the lines when they cut it. "Criminals often steal electric cables and circuits and sell the copper and aluminium components, which is used to make jewellery, aluminium cookware among others", he said. Mr. Amenuvor stated the La Divisional Police Command was investigating the matter. He cautioned the public to avoid fallen electric lines as they are "mad" when energized and could electrocute them and to report it to the nearest ECG Fault Station. He said power had been restored to the affected areas through a redundant line and urged customers to pay their bills promptly so that more redundant lines can be built to serve as back-up when the main line fails. He added that the destroyed pole would be replaced by 21 October when they get permission from the police to do so. It would cost 1000 Ghana Cedis to replace it. Source: GNA