Collapsed tower cannot be sole reason for total blackout: Hiew
KOTA KINABALU:
The Member of Parliament here, Dr Hiew King Cheu, has expressed great regret over the total blackout and power cut all over Sabah on Tuesday evening that lasted for a few hours from 6.30pm.He said the blackout not only brought inconvenience to the people but also losses involving a great sum of money to business operators in many districts, including Tawau, Sandakan and the State Capital. “My cellphone was inundated with calls for three hours and this indicated the seriousness of the power disruption,” he said. Hiew said that he could not contact the Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) personnel during the power failure. He only managed to get through them yesterday for more details. “Their explanation for the statewide blackout was merely due to the collapse of a high tension tower near UMS, which is believed due to some of the metal strut or component of the tower been stolen and removed from the tower. “This caused the tower structure to collapse. The collapse of the tower caused the whole power grid to trip and cut off the power in the whole State. As SESB explained, it will take time to reassume and to feed power to the various parts of Sabah,” said Hiew who also heads the KK DAP Branch. H said the power failure was abnormal and indicated that the power management by SESB and the State Government is highly inefficient. He reckoned that the SESB supply system should be equipped with “fail safe system” to cut off or to link up in case of power generator failure happened in a certain area. “In this case, if the power generator or the line linking or supplying to the State grid failed, there should be an immediate cut off from the main grid and not affecting the whole system in supplying power to the other areas. There must be something seriously wrong in the system technically or there is a design fault. Therefore, the collapsed tower cannot be the sole reason for the total blackout.
