Fencing plague

ON Thursday our reporter in Davao City had an interesting story that was part amusing, but actually more alarming and tragic. According to the report, thieves probably expecting to steal copper telephone wires cut through the protective cladding of a Philippine Long Distance Co. fiber optics line under the Bankerohan Bridge in Davao City late Sunday night, and their stupidity cost businesses a pretty penny: the line was seriously damaged, shutting down direct dialing and Internet connections in the southern part of the city.
       The damage was estimated to be about P500,000—relatively a small sum to big business, but the problem is, it’s not just the PLDT that was jeopardized. Benjamin Gaite, head of the company’s Davao Business Zone, said he was “more concerned with the effect of the fiber optics thievery on the business activity of the city. It cost millions of pesos in losses for banks, shopping malls, hospitals, and other business establishments which were isolated from the rest of the city and the country.”
       The local PLDT office was swamped with complaints and, not satisfied with that, complainants also went to radio and TV stations to air their frustrations, the report added.
       Mr. Gaite appealed to barangay officials and the communities “to help us stop the activity of these thieves.”
       Actually, he is on the right track, as residents of certain Cavite subdivisions and slum colonies in Metro Manila have a similar story: the rampant theft of Meralco and phone-line cables is often an open book in their areas, they’ve long wondered what the companies concerned and the police have been doing.
       On any given day in Dasmariñas, Cavite, residents and utility company staff just shrug off the unending theft of these items, and they will even tell you where they think the lines are being brought and sold for smelting. With copper prices rising worldwide for the past several weeks, the theft has understandably become rampant—and this spells hundreds of millions of pesos in losses to the utility firms. If one were to add the losses to the businesses that are the utilities’ clients, the damage would be far greater.
       Our Davao reporter Manuel Cayon quoted a certain Doods Sison, chief of the PLDT’s Visayas-Mindanao Area Asset Protection office, as saying that police had assured the company they are on the ball and tracking the culprits. “We hope these thieves would be arrested and stop further attempts.”
       And Senior Supt. Catalino Cuy, city police chief, said those who cut through the fiber optics line may have been expecting copper wire which they sell to junk shops. “We are zeroing in on groups known to steal electrical lines and on the buyers of these copper wires, who sell these to smelters in Cebu and Manila.”
       Well, we have news for these gentlemen. The wires brought to Cebu and Metro Manila to be sold to fences are not only those coming from Davao or other cities. The “downstream industries” from the theft of such cables have become virtual one-stop shops through the years, so that cables stolen in, say, Manila or Dasmariñas, Cavite, are brought to nearby areas where they already go through the entire assembly line: the wires are cut up, the copper is removed from the protective cladding and then melted for conversion and eventual sale.
       We don’t know if some Meralco linemen are pulling our leg, but it is said, for example, in Cavite, that some of the thieves are known to carry guns and have in fact shot some conscientious employees who tried to intercept them.
       These days big business is so worried about piracy; and the National Telecommunications Communication is trying to stem the tidal wave of cellular-phone thefts—which are definitely not just in the hundreds, as the PNP’s unbelievable registry would tell you—by cracking down on dealers and outlets that are really just fronts for fences.
       And yet we still have to hear of any serious effort by the law enforcers to crack down on these virtual industries of copper-and-cable thieves that have sprung underground, supposedly, yet operate so brazenly. When criminals carry out their dark deeds with impunity, even the most civic-minded civilian would think 10 times before reporting to the police: the fair presumption is, always, that behind the flagrant violator of the law is a protector with a badge—and a gun.