The Myanmar authorities have been cracking down on theft of wire cable, especially underground cable, by crime-makers to be sold to shops trading copper wire, creating frequent power failure in the city, the Myanmar Times in local language reported on Sunday.

The authorities are launching a constant monitoring operation on shops trading copper wire to expose such crimes, the Times quoted local police as saying.

During last month, the authorities seized 600 meter-long wire cable and other copper wire weighing 66 kilograms and punished shops which re-bought such stolen wire by crime-makers, the report said.

There are 355 copper wire trading shops in Yangon, according to the report.

There had been cases that wire stealers were killed due to short circuit while making such crimes, the authorities said.

Meanwhile, the Myanmar authorities detained over 1,500 jobless street wanderers in Yangon in August as part of its bid to suppress crime makers, linking them with 157 theft cases in the last two months, earlier reports said.

To bring down the crime rate in Yangon, the police have been launching crime-free-week campaign every month since the beginning of this year with policemen patrolling round the clock in crime- sensitive townships in Yangon, coupled with education on crime prevention through exhibitions and distribution of pamphlets against crimes.

Before the campaign was introduced, there had been a greater number of cases of theft, robbery, cheat and murder occurring in Yangon which has a population of over 6.5 million out of the country's 55.4 million.

The authorities attributed 80 percent of the crime cases to the negligence of the victims against crime.

Source: Xinhua