Published on: Thursday, May 07, 2009 |
Kota Kinabalu: The Sabah Environmental Protection Association (Sepa) on Wednesday said it is irresponsible of the Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) to stop power supply from the West Coast to the East Coast.
Its President, Wong Tak, said it is also unfair of SESB to blame residents of the east coast districts for rejecting the proposed coal-fired power plant because "actually what happened is solely because of the company's own poor management".
Citing an example he said the power company carried out maintenance works on several power generation sets at the same time although it already knew about the State's power problem.
"As the sole proprietor of power supply in Sabah, residents of the east coast districts feel it is a very irresponsible of SESB. It is also unfair to blame them for rejecting the proposed coal-fired power plant," he said.
"SESB should know that the east coast is equally as important as the west coast, contributing to the state economy through the oil palm industries which are concentrated mostly in the east coast. Oil palm alone contributes about 7.5 per cent in state tax collection, which totalled over RM1billion."
Wong told reporters this after he attended a luncheon talk on plastic issues in Sabah organised by Environmental Action Committee (EAC) Sabah at Beverly Hotel here Wednesday.
He was referring to the April 30 news report quoting SESB Senior General Manager, Peter Lajumin, that the company has stopped 'transferring' power from the West Coast to the East Coast because it is simply does not make sense to do it since the West Coast is also experiencing power shortage.
The utility company reasoned that it must maintain system stability to prevent a total system collapse.
During the shortfall of (power) generation no power from the West flowed to the East, said Peter, adding this is paramount because otherwise they would be facing a dangerous situation where the entire power system would fail.
Wong said the government should consider letting other companies take over if SESB is no longer capable of providing sufficient power for the people in Sabah.
He said State Government should also consider utilising the abundant resources available for generating power supply like bio-diesel from oil palm, which can also become a new industry in the State.
