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Cable theft cost C&WJ $40m last year
Patrick Foster, Jamaica Observer
Communications giant Cable and Wireless Jamaica has been hit by an upsurge in cable theft that has cost the company approximately $11 million in two months and over $40 million last year.
“The last fiscal year, we had to replace over $41 million worth of cable and since April we have lost about another $11 million, Errol Miller, vice president corporate affairs, told the Business Observer.
Miller said that the theft of cables has been disrupting telephone services in sections of the Corporate Area, St Ann, St Mary, Portland, Manchester and St Catherine.
“Cable theft has been with us for a very long time, but over the past year it has increased significantly,” he said, adding that figures for previous years were not readily available. For many years the telephone company has had problems with the pilferage of copper wire cables which are allegedly used in the underworld for the manufacture of bullets.
But recently the demand for copper and other metals has increased internationally with Jamaica enjoying a booming export market in scrap metals worth approximately US$90 million (J$6 billion) last year.
The fantastic spike in the scrap metal market has resulted in a whopping 800 per cent increase in exports over a 12-month period to 2006.
According to Jamaica Exporters Association (JEA) figures, in 2005 the export of scrap metal stood at a modest US$13.3 million. But by 2006 exports of scrap metal had shot up to US$99.58 million. ..
Increasingly, trucks laden with scrap metal of all descriptions – from old car parts, to water pipes – can be seen traversing Jamaica’s roads. And recently reports have been made regarding the removal of large sections of railway lines in Manchester belonging to the Jamaica Railway Corporation, ostensibly for the export market.
The scraps, for the most part, are shipped to the Far East, especially China, where industrial and economic development is driving a mounting demand for metal as raw material in production.
(25 Jul 2007)
Farmers must fight metal theft locally
Paul Burgarino, InsideBayArea
Local communities will have to toughen up their own restrictions on recyclers, say supporters of metal theft legislation recently scrapped at the state level. ..
While farmers in the Central Valley have had thousands of dollars’ worth of copper wire stolen off their property, pillagers have also hit electricity-generating windmills, telecommunication power boxes, bronze statues, even highway guardrails.
According to the state’s Agricultural Crime Technology and Operations Network, metal theft rose 100 percent in 2005 and 400 percent in 2006 — a trend that continues in 2007.
When the bill was in the Assembly, San Joaquin County Sheriff Steve Moore outlined the countywide losses and damage to farming equipment. He drew a parallel between the increase in thefts to the ease of getting quick cash to buy drugs, primarily methamphetamine. ..
Metal theft is such a concern for farmers in the county that a special task force was created specifically to combat metal theft. “It’s been an epidemic,” said Bruce Blodgett, executive director of the San Joaquin Farm Bureau.
County farmers have had not only thousands of dollars’ worth of copper wire stolen from their property, but also suffer from damaged irrigation pumps. Repairs on those pumps cost anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000, officials say. “Metal thefts can constitute an emergency on farms and ranches,” California Farm Bureau President Doug Mosebar said. “When thieves vandalize an irrigation pump to steal the copper wire, a farmer can find himself unable to water crops when they need it most.” ..
(13 Jul 2007)
Sharp practice of melting coins
Subir Bhaumik, BBC
Millions of Indian coins are being smuggled into neighbouring Bangladesh and turned into razor blades. And that’s creating an acute shortage of coins in many parts of India, officials say.
Police in Calcutta say that the recent arrest of a grocer highlights the extent of the problem. They seized what they said was a huge coin-melting unit which he was operating in a run-down shack. The grocer confessed to melting down tens of thousands of Indian coins into razor blades which were then smuggled into Bangladesh, police said.
“Our one rupee coin is in fact worth 35 rupees, because we make five to seven blades out of them,” the grocer allegedly told the police. “Bangladeshi smugglers take delivery of the blades at regular intervals.”
Police say that initially the smugglers took coins into Bangladesh and then melted them down, but as the scale of the operation has increased, more and more criminals in India are melting them down first, and then selling them as razor blades. ..
(26 Jul 2007)
Dominican Forces Aid Metal Theft
Associated Press via Forbes
Dominican military officials are allowing thieves to steal metals from power lines and export them, hobbling the nation’s already shaky electrical sector, the leader of Congress said in a report published Wednesday.
“There is a mafia in the Dominican Republic in which high-ranking military are implicated that is dedicated to the theft of electric and telephone lines to convert them into copper for export,” majority leader Julio Cesar Valentin was quoted as saying in the Dominican newspaper Hoy.
Valentin, a member of the ruling Dominican Liberation Party, said Congress should act quickly to ban exports of copper, iron and other scrap metals and mandate heavy fines and prison times for traffickers. Companies that purchase stolen materials should also be punished, he said. Spokesmen for the country’s armed forces did not immediately comment on Valentin’s accusations. The majority leader did not name any military officials.
Vandalism of copper power and telephone lines has devastated the nation’s already struggling power sector. When thieves in Santo Domingo cut 1,000 feet of wire in May, it knocked out power to a huge swath of the capital for two hours – including a hospital, naval base and downtown hotel.
Stolen wires made up much of the 2,396 tons of copper scrap exported from the Dominican Republic since January 2006, worth about $1.8 million. The country has no active copper mines. ..
(12 Jul 2007)
For Thieves, Copper Is Gold in the Gutter
Candace Rondeaux and Dan Morse, Washington Post
On several occasions this month, thieves dug up hundreds of feet of underground copper cable used to illuminate ball fields in Anne Arundel County, forcing the organizers of a youth baseball tournament to reschedule a half-dozen games. “We got hit three times in eight days,” said Ray Fox, president of the Linthicum Ferndale Youth Athletic Association. ..
Thieves in recent weeks have crawled under cars to cut out their catalytic converters, a component of a vehicle emissions system, in a parking lot in the Annapolis area and a junkyard in Howard County. With the price of aluminium near a 20-year high last summer, someone carted away the bleacher seats at the District’s Fort Greble Field, home to Ballou Senior High School’s baseball team.
In some cases, thieves have put themselves in great danger by stealing live electrical wires from buildings. A 41-year-old man was electrocuted this month in a vacant building in Pasadena, and a 47-year-old man was killed while stripping wire from a D.C. school last year. In the past year, about two dozen people have been killed across the country while trying to steal metals, according to news accounts. ..
(25 Jul 2007)
See also Metal theft rise causing chaos in Teesside churches & Theft of veterans’ grave markers.
