A team of crime scene experts from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Police headquarters have been deployed to Tema in the Greater Accra Region to commence investigation into the vandalised pylon transmitting 161 kilovolt power from the Volta station near the Ghana Grid Company headquarters.
The team which was sent on Monday to the crime scene would assist the Tema Regional Police Command in investigating the case of stealing, the Police Source at Tema told the Ghanaian Times in Accra yesterday.
The source said intelligence reports are been gathered and appealed to the public to provide reliable information to the Police to enable it investigate and apprehend the perpetrators.
It would be recalled that the March 26 edition of the Ghanaian Times reported that some unidentified people at the early hours of Monday vandalised a pylon transmitting 161 kilovolt power from the Volta station near Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCO) headquarters to the Volta Aluminium Company Limited (Valco) smelter and Tema.
The Volta station is the point where power transmitted from the Akosombo hydroelectric power plant is sent for voltage transformation before redistribution to Tema, Accra and surrounding areas.
Officials of GRIDCO said the unpatriotic act disrupted power supply to Accra West and the whole of Kumasi from 1:30am until power was restored at 1:58am.
It also affected the Karpowership Ghana Limited which contributes 450 megawatts power into the national grid.
The vandals used a hack saw blade to cut the bolts to remove the nuts holding the pylons to its concrete foundation before pushing it to fall eastwards and in the process disabling an adjoining pylon.
Strangely they did not take away any part of the fallen tower. They also left behind the hack saw blade used to commit the blunder and the bolts and nuts from the tower.
There are more than 20,000 towers in the country and officials said it was the first time that a thing like that had happened.
It would cost GRIDCO more than $50,000 to replace the tower.
BY ANITA NYARKO-YIRENKYI
