The cut that will never heal!

Your editorial captioned ‘To Cut or Not to Cut’ gives a glimpse of the pathetic picture on this vital sector – ELECTRICITY’ – and need to be commended and commented on.

You state ‘Minister Gamini Lokuge has said there will be uninterrupted power supply’. The confusion arises when it says CEB has obtained approval from Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka [PUCSL] for a scheduled power cut and the Minister for Power saying there will be uninterrupted supply. May we the consumers know as to who administers the CEB and whom to believe. Is it the Ministry for Power or PUCSL? If it is PUCSL, what use is in having a Ministry and allocate this subject to the Ministry under which PUCSL is listed. It is pertinent to know who advised Minister Gamini Lokuge, for he is a layman to the subject. Those who advised, may be outsiders and not from the CEB as the CEB has received the approval for power cuts from PUCSL.

The next statement from President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who has instructed a group of officials of the CEB to explore ways and means to solve the problem. If I may be excused, this situation has arisen due to non-implementation of the generation plan on schedule. The President cancelled the additional Coal Power Plant at Norochcholai without consultation and forced the CEB to achieve 70% renewable energy by 2030, perhaps, not considering the dry season when Hydro reservoirs run almost dry. Added to this, the then Minister for Power and Energy, Ranjith Siyambalapitiya interfered in the award of the tender for a LNG plant at Kerawalapitiya, which dragged on for over four years. If this plant was commissioned in time, this ‘Cut’ could have been avoided.

The other noteworthy statement made in your editorial is ‘At present, most problems in the country is beset with the boil down to one thing – a severe shortage of dollars. Power and energy sectors are among the worst affected sectors’. How did this come about? It is certainly, undertaking unprofitable schemes on foreign loans and the repayment with interest in dollars. Had these schemes being shelved for better times, the country would have had sufficient foreign exchange to meet imports of fuel and other essentials needed to feed the people.

What blunders made by governments, whatever political party, we now face the music and you can be rest assured politicians will never learn a lesson and the masses too are quick to forget when elections draw near, and the situation allowed to aggravate and only make protests after the mistake had been committed.

So, let us endure the sweet joy and the sour of the never healing CUT.

G. A .D. Sirimal
BORALESGAMUWA