By Laurina B. Lormia (Intern)
Darius Kumorteh, commonly known as Teddy Ride, has been set free by the head of the anti-power theft taskforce, Mary Broh.
Kumorteh was accused by one of the field supervisors of the anti-power theft force, Sylvester Tugbeh, who claimed that his technician entered the residence of the Liberian artist and discovered he was illegally connected to the power grid by what is known in Liberia as ‘by-passing the meter.’
“I did a video; he by-passed the meter because he doesn’t want to subscribe and pay for the current. He has been using free current for a very long time. We did all of the tests. We had our voltage reader and read the output voltage and everything was flowing free,” Tugbeh charged.
He threatened that he would take Kumorteh’s meter to their meter lab to read through his recharge history and they were going to get the results before deciding whether to reconnect him or not.
“This is why we invited the police to take Teddy, but he’s insisting that he is not going. So, we are waiting to see the next action that will be taken by the police,” Tugbeh said.
“They were taking the current directly from the LEC pole that is standing in front of the house; we took the line down already and placed it in the car. We are now waiting on the police so that we can turn Teddy over to our boss, Mary Broh,” Tugbeh said.
He informed some bystanders who had come to intervene in the situation that upon their discovery of the power theft by the accused, Teddy Ride invited them to a conference to compromise the situation, saying, “I told him that I came to do my job and I am not here to solve problem on the street.”
For his part, Kumorteh explained that he had just returned from out of the country when he met Tugbeh and his team at his house, and upon entering his property, a group of police officers and people claiming to be employees of the Liberia Electricity Corporation entered his premises without a warrant or an invitation, or a notice.
“I have my maid and security here who are working for me; I just moved in this community and I usually give money to the people around me to buy my current and recharge my meter. But to my utmost surprise, these guys from LEC said they are checking in the meter they checked and saw problem in the meter that I know nothing about,” Teddy stated.
Teddy said, “I have been in this house for the past two months and my meter has never read zero before, because I recharge far ahead of time. When I am not around, I either give the money to my maid or the security to recharge the meter. So, I am very surprised to know that I am illegally connected to LEC.”
In a counter reaction to the Liberia Electricity Cooperation anti-power theft team and in defense of the accused, the head of the team, Mary Broh, observed that Teddy was not responsible for the stealing of current, because he is a new resident of the community, and moreover, he is not the one who recharges his meter. She clarified that the accused, Teddy Ride, has been out of the country for the past two months, saying, “When he was out of the country, people always used to call him and tell him his AC is on. When he called at the house, the maid and security would say the AC is not on. Moreover, the meter was bypassed either by his maid or security. When you have a meter and bypass it, you are tasked to pay a fine, but for his case, it was physically by-passed and it was done by people from within.
