KUCHING: Cable thieves are difficult to identify but awareness to curb the rampant Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) cable thefts in Sarawak can be raised through concerted community responsibility with the police force, said TM Sarawak general manager Abdul Rahim Mohd Ali.
He said TM also offered small rewards for those who caught the thieves, as part of its awareness campaign.
“In terms of revenue, the state-wide thefts are a big loss to Telekom, which can amount to millions of ringgit monthly, but it is a bigger loss to the community at large,” he told reporters after hosting a breaking-of-fast with the media here last night.
Abdul Rahim said stealing cables for the copper content, which could fetch quite good prices, was found to be particularly rampant in the outskirts of Kuching city and other towns as well as in remote rural areas.
“The problem cannot be stopped as long as there is demand,” he said, adding that there were no specific laws to tackle such illegal activities at present while the Secondhand Dealers Act 1946, now being enforced in the peninsula, had yet to be extended to the state. — BERNAMA