Six employees of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL)  company are now in police custody following the theft of 118 rolls of copper wire from the company’s store in Sophia.

The stolen rolls were valued at approximately $ 6 million dollars and were said to comprise 10 mm, 16 mm and 25 mm cables.

However, 67 of these rolls of cable have since been recovered after it was discovered that some of the stolen rolls had been sold to an electrical store in the city.  The recovered rolls are valued at approximately $2.5 to $3 million.  Of the rolls recovered two were 25 mm cables, five were 16 mm cables and the remaining sixty were 10 mm cables.

The six workers in custody comprise employees who work at the Head Office and Sophia Store. Reports are that the employees at the two establishments colluded with each other and were able to access the wires by forging signatures on requisition forms.

When contacted by this newspaper, Loss Production Manager of GPL Loaknauth Singh confirmed the report and said that police are investigating the matter.

According to him, the company’s management                                     received information that the signature on a requisition form had been forged and decided to investigate the mater.

He said police were notified on Thursday and proceeded to arrest the employees.

Singh said that the company is still trying to ascertain whether other items are missing from its Sophia store.

Stabroek News was told that these stolen cables are used by GPL for Itron metering, normal metering and maximum demand metering.

The copper wires are believed to have been stolen during the course of last month.

The theft comes after the well-publicised pillaging of expensive transformers from GPL.

One of these transformers was found in a recently opened store.