Finance Minister, Samuel Tweah has warned that President George Weah has resolved to name and shame Liberians including government officials who will be caught in the act of power theft across the country.
Minister Tweah among other things stated that said move by the government is intended to ensure that the issue of power theft which according to him is drastically affecting the country’s electricity sector is being eradicated.
Speaking yesterday, when he phoned in on the OK FM conversation, the country’s Finance Minister stressed, “Anybody in government that joins in the habit of stealing current for their personal or business use, I can assure you that once we get the information on them, we will investigate, publish their names and prosecute them in accordance with the laws.”
“We are now coming up with this new policy to ensure that we deal with this whole power theft business because if you look at the statics, LEC is losing too many revenues as a result of this menacing issue,” he intimated.
According to him, the government has now issued the Liberia Electricity Corporation a new mandate to ensure that they enforce the power theft law against any one citizen or individual including government officials, noting that there is need to curtail this unscrupulous act entirely.
He then asked, “How can we say we want to build our roads, schools and improve our country’s infrastructure and other sectors of government when we, ourselves are the same people that are also stealing from the very same sector that is supposed to help the government grow?”
“This power theft issue is very serious and we will no longer overlook or pay deaf ears to it anymore. As you can recall, the U.S. Embassy also frowned on this act and called on the government to take immediate action to stop it, so, moving forward, the government will act and apply all means possible to bring to an end, power theft,” Minister Tweah vowed.
Meanwhile, Minister Tweah is calling on all Liberians, irrespective of their political affiliation to join the government and the LEC to vigorously fight power theft across the country.
He said, “This is a tedious task and as such, the government and citizens need to work together to fight power theft and begin to save more revenues that will enable the country grow economically and infrastructure wise to be on par with other nations.”