Two men in cooler for stealing ESCOM wires

Two men identified as Lovemore Chitekwe, 38 and Isaac Mdala, 47 have been arrested in Phalombe for stealing 14 bundles of Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM) cooper wire in the district.

District Police spokesperson Jimmy Kapanja confirmed the arrest of the suspects.

Kapanje said the two suspects stole the items from an ESCOM transformer at Namba trading center.

Recently, other two suspects have been arrested in Ndirande Township for committing the same offence of vandalizing ESCOM wires.

ESCOM complained that the replacing of the vandalized cables cost billions of money.

According to ESCOM, the money used to replace the cables could have been used in improving access to electricity to essential service providers such as health centres, schools and water treatment plants.

Lovemore Chitekwe comes from Tambala Village, Traditional Authority (TA) Mabuka in Mulanje while Isaac Mdala comes from Chaphola Village, TA Mpama, in Chiradzulu district.