NEWS & UPDATES

Kuching, 27 September 2013: Syarikat SESCO Berhad (SESCO) today reiterates its stance on zero tolerance for power theft and echoes that the act is a crime and will endanger not only themselves, but potentially jeopardise the lives of others.

Spokesperson of SESCO said: “We are deeply disappointed at the baseless claims of one of the elected representatives, who has chosen to indulge in political grandstanding rather than working with us to eradicate this problem that is affecting Sarawak. We believe that it is wrong for anybody to get mileage out of the issue, especially political mileage."

“Statistics show that the power theft is still rampant in the state and we urge all parties to work together to resolve this issue. As at August 2013, Sibu registered the highest 25%, Miri 18%, Sarikei 16%, Kuching 13% and the rest in the region of 10%. This resulted in total annual loss of RM70 million".

“We would like to stress that we have not directly named any person in the comment to the media regarding the recent statement on power theft, as we have received a lot of queries from many YBs from various political parties.”

On the allegation of being ‘high-handed by disconnecting power supply to its clients when they failed to pay the amount due without going through proper legal means”, SESCO would like to clarify that Section 33A (3) of the Electricity Ordinance allows the licensee (SESCO) to discontinue supply of energy to the consumer if the amount is not paid by the consumer. SESCO gives ample disconnection reminder notices prior to carrying out physical disconnection of electricity supply on the premise.

We strongly advise our customers to approach SESCO for any billing queries. SESCO has Arrears Appeal Process in place to answer customers' queries on any arrears bills. During the arrears appeal interview, customers will be explained on the arrears computation period and method and evidence of irregularities detected.

Customer privacy is a priority for SESCO and under the protection of the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), these cases should not be discussed publicly or through any third party. In 2013, we have approved 149 out of 254 appeals and this equates to almost half. Those that were not approved were caused by lack of supporting documentation to justify their cases.

	2011	2012	2013
Number of appeal cases	129	394	254
Number of appeal cases approved	57	241	149

Table:  Number of Arrears Appeal Cases by Year

Again, we hope this issue will not be politicized further and all parties to work together with us to fight against power theft.