1,400 come clean on electricity theft

Enemalta is expecting to increase its annual revenue from electricity by around Lm300,000 following a three-month campaign to curb theft, corporation chairman Alex Tranter said yesterday.

Until last Friday, 1,400 clients whose electricity meters were tampered with answered Enemalta's call to pay Lm100 to regularise their position and install a digital meter. This raised a further Lm140,000.

Mr Tranter said the figure might increase substantially with more people reporting irregularities before Friday's deadline to answer the call. He said the number of clients could come close to 2,200.

The majority of irregularities concerned seals that were either tampered with or damaged and holes in the meters.

The three-month campaign has been a much more efficient means of controlling abuse than the corporation's theft unit, which last year discovered 500 irregularities through ad hoc inspections.

Enemalta has already processed 70 per cent of the applications by changing the clients' electricity meter into a tamper-proof digital one. Mr Tranter said pending applications should be tackled within the next two weeks.

Although Mr Tranter referred to the campaign as a success, he said a number of people were still abusing the system and he urged them to come in line.

As from Saturday, the corporation will start taking harsher measures with electricity thieves. Clients will have to pay the difference between what they paid and what Enemalta calculates they should have paid during the past five years together with interest. The power supply will be suspended if the bill is not settled.