An 18-year-old school dropout, Okey Seghou, will be spending the next eight months in prison after being found guilty of theft by the Aflao District Magistrate Court.
He was guilty of stealing electrical cables belonging to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). He was sentenced last Friday, July 20, 2018, when he appeared before the Aflao District Court presided over by Frimpong Manso.
The cables have a street value of about GH¢6,700. They are part of materials being used by the company to construct a new network line from ECG’s Aflao Bulk Supply Point (BSP) to Keta.
The prosecutor, Detective Corporal Somon Foritong, said the suspect was spotted by a resident of Aflao on Wednesday, July 18, 2018, at about 4 am. He was in the company of another person who was carting electrical cables.
The suspect was confronted by the resident and questioned but he failed to provide any tangible reason for possessing the cables; hence he was escorted to the police station. However, his accomplice absconded after they had been confronted by the resident.
When the suspect was arrested at the police station, he claimed that the accomplice named Eskala was his brother who asked for his assistance to convey the cables to Avoeme for sale.
The ECG District Manager for Denu, Christine Hadzi, expressed gratitude to the residents of Aflao for their vigilance, and called on all to support the ECG as it makes strides to improve the quality of service to customers.
The district manager disclosed: “The project to link the Aflao BSP to Keta is intended to provide an alternative and robust system, which will eventually reduce the period when customers experience outages. The multi-million cedi project has suffered several setbacks due to incidents of theft of materials”.
Ms Hadzi hopes that the imprisonment of the suspect will serve as a deterrent to anyone who may desire to engage in similar negative acts.
From Fred Duodu, Ho (k.duodu@yahoo.com)