30840: (news) Chamberlain: Copper theft (Haiti mentioned) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By JONATHAN M. KATZ

   SANTO DOMINGO, July 29 (AP) -- Copper exports from the Dominican
Republic are surging, but the metal's not coming from underground.
   Thieves have been cutting down power and telephone wires to sell the
valuable metal inside as scrap. Their haul accounts for much of the 288
tons exported through June -- an impressive total for a Caribbean nation
without any active copper mines.
   Soaring metal prices driven partly by demand from China have motivated
bandits across Latin America, whose plundering of communication lines,
traffic lights and other wiring has cut electricity to entire neighborhoods
and damaged struggling economies.
   "Globalization has created a climate in which these types of activities
are going to flourish," said Cuauhtemoc Calderon Villareal, an economist
with the Tijuana, Mexico-based Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
   The rise in world copper prices, which reached a record $4.16 a pound in
May 2005 and have stayed mostly above $3, has meant a bonanza for owners of
copper mines in Bolivia, Peru and Mexico. It is also driving copper
exploration in areas including the central mountains of the Dominican
Republic.
   But enterprising thieves find valuable metals in plenty of more
convenient places.
   In Brazil, a 19-year-old homeless man was arrested and charged with
sawing the arms and a replica trophy off a bronze statue of soccer legend
Pele last month. Police said he earned $54 for the stolen metal.
   Jamaican thieves ripped up tracks and cables from an old Kingston
railway station. Haiti, the hemisphere's poorest country, runs television
ads imploring people to "stop cutting down wires."
   In May, the South American nation of Guyana banned exports of scrap
metal altogether to close the market for thieves who have taken the wiring
out of traffic lights in the capital and towns along the Atlantic coast.
   The vandalism has been disastrous for the crippled Dominican electrical
sector, which loses about half the power it generates to infrastructure
damage and customers who do not pay. When thieves in Santo Domingo cut
1,000 feet of wire in May, it knocked out power to a huge swath of the
capital for two hours -- including a hospital, naval base and downtown
hotel.
   "The wire thieves are increasing the number of blackouts," said Pedro
Pena Rubio, commercial director of the Dominican state-run electric
company. "They need to abandon this practice immediately."
   The Dominican government has responded by setting up an investigative
task force and, beginning in April, requiring exporters to prove they
obtained their copper scrap legally. Copper exports have since fallen by
almost 20 percent, according to customs officials.
   A probe of the 11 companies that have exported more than $1.8 million
worth of copper scrap from the Dominican since January 2006 so far has not
produced indictments.
   Much of the country's scrap copper goes to China, which imported 460,000
tons of the metal in the first two months of this year to help feed its
booming economy.
   People in Santo Domingo describe seeing some of their poorest neighbors
walking down the street with reams of stolen wire wrapped around their
shoulders.
   "They do it right during the day, they don't care," said 18-year-old
Noemi Ramirez, who works in an ice cream shop that depends on a diesel
generator to get through daily blackouts.