SABAH ELECTRICITY (SE) will intensify efforts to crackdown on defaulters but has admitted that it was sometimes difficult to make a disconnection stick as the more underhanded customers managed to get the better of the company.
A spokeswoman for the company said fuses, “jumpers”, meters and service-lines could be removed when a termination was carried out at a premises with outstanding charges.
“Some occupants, however, engage the services of private parties to have these electrical fixtures put back in place,” she said.
With 180,000-strong consumer-base in the State Capital alone, she said the firm’s disconnection teams often faced an uphill task trying to see that a disconnection was effectively enforced.
“Our Kota Kinabalu-zone extends all the way from Kinarut and Penampang to Inanam and Telipok. Our technicians cannot be everywhere at once to determine who among our errant customers has gone behind our back to restore their supply, once it has been cut.”
Owing to this, the spokeswoman hoped that landlords would play a more participatory role in ensuring that renters did their due diligence when it came to settling the electricity charges for the premises they were occupying.
“Don’t just leave it to our staff to determine that these accounts are cleared on time. Property-owners should regularly keep tabs on the payments being made by their tenants so that they do not, inevitably, wind up having to pick up the slack.”
She was responding to feedback from a Luyang consumer who was straddled with a bill for more than RM8,000 recently because his former tenant had been remiss in clearing the electricity charges.
“I am quite certain that there are other landlords who have been caught in the same ludicrous situation,” the homeowner, BERT, said.
To prove his point, he related the experience of a friend who was stuck with a bill of over RM2,200, after her renter quit her place.
“Why didn’t the company do anything [prior to our tenants leaving] about terminating the supply to my house and her apartment?
“To the best of my knowledge, once you have accrued a certain outstanding amount, you receive a ‘red notice’ informing you that unless you clear your account within seven days your account will be cut.”
Bert felt that SE should have been more proactive in going after the unpaid bills, instead of “burdening landlords” with these charges.
He provided Hotline with the billing details for his house, which were forwarded to the firm.
The spokeswoman said a check of its records showed that Bert’s account had been intermittently cleared, every two to three months, up till April last year.
“The average monthly cost of the electricity used at his premises came up to about RM400,” she said.
“The supply was disconnected several times, with the fuse being removed and even ‘the jumper’ being cut in some instances.”
She said the power was most recently terminated in August.
Since January, a reminder to settle the outstanding charges had been included in Bert’s monthly bill, according to the spokeswoman.
“The RM8,000 plus in charges in his account was cleared earlier this month.”
Meanwhile, the company has attended to a cable which was drooping down outside the entrance to a house in the Karamunsing area.
A spokesman for SE said an inspection was made of Jalan Sang Kancil on the same day that the company was contacted by Hotline.
“Our staff confirmed the presence of a low-voltage overhead line which was hanging down across the air space in front of a house on the stretch,” he said.
He said the cable was repositioned away from the front gate to the premises a few weeks later.
“A new pole was put in place to support the dropping power line. The necessary machinery was deployed to facilitate this effort.”
WILLS of Karamunsing expressed his concern about the cable, which at the time, had just been put up along his housing road.
“The service line extends about 20 feet from the ground,” he said. “I fear that it might snag to the top of the bigger vehicles entering my compound, including any trucks coming to deliver goods to me.”
Wills said there was a strong possibility of the cable being severed in two if this happened.
“The neighbourhood would surely experience an outage in such a circumstance. Worse still anyone who came in contact with the torn power line could wind up being electrocuted.”
