The Tribune

COPPER thieves who targeted a BTC substation in Grand Bahama damaged the company’s fibre network and caused service disruption to scores of customers.

According to BTC, shortly after 8am yesterday officials discovered what appeared to be evidence of copper theft at BTC’s substation on East Atlantic Drive.

The theft caused service outages for commercial and residential customers in the surrounding areas including the Rand Memorial Hospital, Grand Bahama Power, Paradise Games and up to 110 residential customers in nearby communities who would likely remain without fixed and broadband services for a minimum timeframe of three hours, BTC said Wednesday afternoon.

This is the latest in what has become a “spree of thefts” which have occurred this year with the most recent taking place as recently as two weeks ago, the company’s press released added.

“In the Gambier Drive area, we had three spans of 600 lines stolen,” explained BTC’s Senior Technical Manager Elvis Bartlett who said such incidents often increase during the holiday season.

BTC said restoration teams were immediately dispatched to the area and were working quickly to address the issue, however impacted customers were expected to experience some delays.

“Not only do these kinds of incidents come at great financial cost to the company, they are also quite inconvenient for our customers and have widespread implications for the impacted entities,” said VP of Customer Experience Eldri Ferguson-Mackey. “As a result of this we’re going to have some customers who are going to be out until tomorrow (Thursday), and this is at the height of the holiday season, when children are home from school, there is no phone service and no internet and that obviously is not what we want for our customers.”

In 2013, Leslie Miller, then executive chairman of the Bahamas Electricity Corporation, and Rupert Roberts, Super Value CEO, called on the government to place a permanent ban on the export of copper.

At the time, Mr Miller said copper thieves have caused businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

In July 2011, the Ingraham administration placed a temporary ban on the scrap metal trade and a permanent ban on copper export after an increase in copper theft.

However, the former government later lifted the copper ban and amended the Customs Management Act to allow for copper exports under stringent conditions.