By Shiran Ranasinghe

The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has the ability to maintain an uninterruped power supply during the GCE AL examination, CEB Technological Engineers’ and Superintendents’ Union President A.G.U. Nishantha said.

The CEB had to stop purchasing power from the costly diesel power plants and manage the available power production, he said.

“We have been urging the government since last year to provide adequate naphtha to Kelanitissa Combined Cycle Power Station to minimise power cuts. It was also cheaper than procuring emergency power from the private sector,” he said.

Nishantha said the CEB claims that it will lose four billion rupees of it does not cut power during the AL exam.

“The GCE AL is a critical exam. A lot rides on this. Imagine the impact the power cuts will have on the children. We keep on buying power from diesel plants owned by the private sector. We incur a loss of 50 billion from that alone per annum,” he said.

“The plant was offline from 2019 October to 2021 April. Sri Lanka lost Rs. 21.5 billion as a result, a committee appointed to investigate it has reported.

In 2019, the machines at the Kelanitissa Combined Cycle Power Station were overhauled at a cost of USD 3.1 million. Now, everything is in order, but we are not getting naphtha. They say there is not enough naphtha because the Sapugaskanda refinery is not operating. Why is the government doing this? Does it want to make the crisis worse,” he asked.

“Many people suspect that this is a ploy to delay elections. Maybe the government wants to dupe the people into believing that the money earmarked for the election should be diverted to the CEB. This is a dangerous game,” he said.