SESCO welcomes police's move to enforce Second Hand Dealer's Act effective Feb 1

 KUCHING, January 19, 2017 -   Sarawak Energy Berhad's retail and operations arm Syarikat SESCO Berhad (SESCO) welcomes the recent announcement made by the state police on the enforcement of the Second-Hand Dealer's Act effective Feb 1, 2017.

 Vandalised transformer at a substation at Muara Tebas, costing SESCO RM45,000 in loss

Local media have reported that the police will be fully enforcing the Second Hand Dealer’s Act and will be launching a state-wide operation to go after unlicensed dealers of second-hand goods. 

Second-hand dealers provide a market for cable thieves to sell stolen cables. Since 2015, there have been 374 cases of cable theft targeted at SESCO electrical facilities.

The company has spent more than RM 1.3 million to replace stolen and damaged equipment in the last two years.

Congratulating the police on this initiative, SESCO Chief Executive Officer  Lau Kim Swee  said: “We would like to thank the police for their cooperation and support that has resulted in the arrests of suspects related to cable theft cases at our facilities.

"We look forward to continuing to work closely with the police to further assist in this area.

"There have been quite a number of reported cable theft cases happening at our facilities lately. Such cases don't just cause inconvenience to the people due to outages, but have also resulted in tragic fatalities," added Lau.

In the most recent incident, copper parts worth RM45,000 from a 300KVA 11kV/433V transformer at a SESCO substation at Muara Tebas were stolen.

In addition to causing equipment failure, power outages and electrocution, cable theft can also cause unstable voltage, damaging customers' electrical appliances.

While efforts have stepped up in terms of security and monitoring, SESCO seeks continued assistance from members of the public to report any cases of cable theft or suspicious activities around its facilities. 

Concerned citizens may contact SESCO via the Sarawak Energy Customer Care Centre at 1-300-88-3111. Reports can also be logged into Sarawak Energy’s “SEB Cares” Mobile App, available for download at Apple’s App Store for iOS and Google’s Play Store for Android.- ENDS