Published on: Saturday, August 22, 2009 |
Kota Kinabalu: There is nothing to look forward to on power supply in Sabah in the coming months or years if a recent briefing by the Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) is anything to go by.
State DAP Vice Chairman Anthony Teo said the picture painted by SESB was that the electricity supply in the State would be "very erratic or more so in Sandakan."
"This will indeed be a major cause of concern and gloomy for Sabahans especially those living in the East Coast ÉI think this briefing is like (a) 'I told you so' (briefing)," said Teo, who is also the Sabah DAP Industrial Bureau chief.
The briefing he was referring to involved the SESB Public Relations Department, which spoke to several groups about the recent severe power interruption involving their corporate consumers in Sandakan, on Thursday.
"The briefing provided interesting views into the inner workings of SESB where it showed through the other interested players in the industries such as the State government, Federal departments, proponent of the Independent Power Providers (IPP) and politicians all wanting to protect their sphere of influence at the expense of Sabahans.
"This has put a huge constraint on SESB management and with outside interference, their hands are tied to their backs as SESB is unable to take the directions it wants to go and there is also much procrastination within SESB for fear of stepping on some powerful and well-connected toes."
In a statement here, Friday, Teo said it was with the understanding that Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) had the experience and financial resources to undertake proper development when TNB took over as the sole power provider in Sabah decades ago.
"But after 25 years in Sabah, it's nothing but clearly a TNB failure because it allowed the powerfully connected corporate vultures to detect terms and turn Sabah into their milking cow under the pretext of privatisation," he said.
He also pointed out that it was alarming that 53 per cent of the power generation in Sabah depended on IPPs.
"If this trend continues, Sabahans will wake up to the fact that we are at the mercy of IPPs. I strongly urge SESB to reverse this trend to have a healthy ratio of 70 per cent (of the power generation) on SESB and 30 per cent IPP."
Meanwhile, Teo said, by their own admission, the West Coast (Kota Kinabalu) has a power generation capacity of 510.9MW but only utilised 474.4MW.
"This means there is a margin of only 7.7 per cent, which in this industry, is like living on the edge all the time.
"Therefore, if any one of the SESB or IPP generating facilities go down, it would invariably plunge Sabah into darkness. I do operate a generator set of 2,000v and my supplier is at pains to advise me to operate at only 70 per cent of the capacity."
Sandakan, he said, including Kinabatangan, only has a power generation capacity of 181.64MW but requires 229.6MW daily and because of its heavy dependence on the East-West Grid, the disruption to the West Coast power generation capacity will cause major disruptions to Sandakan, as is the case now.
In the case of IPP Powerton, the much delayed 190MW gas-fired project, which ran into some protracted legal problem on land matters, Teo pointed out the State Government should have stepped in under the Sabah Land Acquisition Ordinance to acquire the land and resovle this perennial power shortage problem.
