By Africa 24 correspondent
Thieves now take upon themselves to hijack overhead power cables in most parts in the Rural Area district in the west of Sierra Leone.
One notorious place where this intolerable action has occurred several times is in Waterloo, the outskirts of Freetown.
At a drive on York Road some thieves are now in the habit of cutting off overhead power cables at night hours.
This unfortunate and unpatriotic acts have been undertaken by certain an unidentified unscrupulous men who are believed not to have stayed too far from the community.
Their criminal actions are done right in front of the district city council’s head office in Waterloo.
Western Area District Council building is located just a stone throw to 5 Jalloh Drive where these thieves have sought out their hideouts.
And it’s at this same York Road where council’s men’ district office is. The community is where some idle guys stay and have lately resorted to stealing off government’s electricity power lines, an act that is qualified as a ‘’serious criminal offence’’ punishable either by imprisonment or levying heavy fines to a defaulter(s).
We spoke to a community stakeholder, Mohamed Kamara, and he explained to us more about how these thieves have affected their lives, including their children at home.
“My brother we don’t know whether it is those of my neighbours’ young boys that are doing this havoc; I suspect that it could be them [the boys] or maybe other idle young boys within the community,” he said.
“It might also be the electrician guys we are paying to fix up for us the power cables who are doing this criminal game by turning up at night to steal and re-steal the cables they had fixed,”
“This is the second time we are paying an electrician to fix up the cable for us from where it is cut off; it is costing us a lot more money as a half-length cable is sold now at about Le 1 million plus,”
“Throughout the days when we had blackout due to the cut off, I was unable to recharge my phones; I had to pay up money to those guys who run up mobile rechargeable tele-centres and that means I have to pay for each charging Le 4.”
Asked about what was their next plan of action in order to bring justice on those night-criminals, Kamara said, they would devise a way, this time, on the power cable technically, so that the thieves could not cart it away.
This bad practice had been happening in the past during the era of former President Ernest Bai Koroma under his administration.
At that time, criminals would always go about removing away power cables on highways in the provinces dismantle the cables for copper and sold it off, but these criminals they had never been seriously dealt with by law authorities.
It’s hoped that authorities in Waterloo take a speedy and robust action by doing ‘surprising night patrols’ in many parts in Waterloo and beyond in order to hold up or arrest several of these night thieves.