Police Gives Scrap Dealers Ten Days to Surrender Vandalized Electricity Equipment

Scrap dealers in Jinja city and Jinja district have ten days to voluntarily hand over vandalized electricity equipment or risk arrest. The Kiira Region Police Spokesperson, James Mubi announced the ultimatum on Thursday, saying that they resolved to give the scrap dealers time to cooperate since many are still harboring vandalized electricity equipment in their warehouses.

This comes a few days after Kiira region police recovered vandalized electricity conductors from the Jinja city-based Giant Steel factory. Police also arrested Edward Katongole, a Kampala city-based scrap dealer, who is suspected to be directly involved in the sale of vandalized electricity equipment to the Giant factory. 

Katongole is in custody at Jinja central police station as the search for his accomplice is ongoing. Mubi notes that most scrap dealers connive with vandals from whom they cheaply purchase vandalized electricity equipment and sell it to factories at higher prices.

Mubi says that new measures are aimed at destroying the ready market for vandalized electricity equipment. "It will be easy for us to fight vandalism if these black markets for vandalized equipment are destroyed at the middlemen level of largely scrap dealers," he said. He argues that a team of detectives has been dispatched to identify warehouse owners hoarding vandalized electricity equipment who will be arrested once they fail to comply with the ultimatum.

Mubi reveals that they are liaising with different energy sector players to ensure tight monitoring of factories involved in the illegal purchase of vandalized equipment so as to contain the vice. Musa Mugabi, a renowned scrap dealer in Jinja city says that they lack clear leadership and their industry has been infiltrated by what he termed as self-seekers behind the vandalism.

"This call by police will awaken us on the urgent need to form clear leadership, which will enable us to stay watchful on the source of each other's scrap materials, so as to avoid the purchase of vandalized equipment," he said. Mugabi says that their industry requires regulation to weed out seasoned illicit dealers, whom he accuses of conniving with vandals to target electrical installations ranging from conductors to transformer parts and oil.

He also argues that there is a need for the government to set clear policies for the scrap business, which he says will stem the increasing number of roadside scrap dealers, who blindly purchase vandalized electricity equipment without conducting due diligence to ascertain their source.