Saturday’s Islandwide Blackout - Sabotage Or Incompetence? - EDITORIAL

Shortly after 17:00hrs on Saturday, the lights went out in Lanka. At first most people felt it was a localised power failure. Shortly thereafter news began spreading like wildfire that the power failure was not a localised incident but an islandwide outage. 

The question on everyone’s mind was whether the unexpected power outage was an act of sabotage, coming as it did in the immediate aftermath of the recently gazetted Sri Lanka Electricity Bill and the discussion on a shake-up of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) as a whole.
The state-run CEB is a net loss-making venture. During the first eight months of 2023 the board made a loss Rs. 18.2 billion rupees. During the 10-year period from 2010 to 2019, the CEB had accumulated a total loss of over Rs. 246 billion. 

Media reports initially quoted CEB sources announcing the outage as a breakdown of the Kotmale-Biyagama Transmission Line. However other sources in that organisation, claimed that power outages occur when hydro power generation exceed 60 percent of reservoir capacity. 
They claimed that hydro power generation on Friday was over 65 percent. Since the engineers knew this, how come they did nothing to prevent it? Another story was that multiple lightening strikes were responsible for the power outage.

Whichever story is correct, this is not the first time our country faced a total blackout. In December 2021, a similar situation arose leading to an islandwide blackout which lasted five hours. Saturday’s blackout too lasted a similar length of time.
During the rule of former President Gotabaya we faced 12-hour rolling power cuts. This was however a result of the economic meltdown and a shortage of fuel. But even during those dark days we did not face a country-wide blackout.

The Chairman of the CEB refused to comment on speculations that the blackout was a deliberate act of sabotage, saying the cause of the blackout would be investigated only after power was fully restored.
However the public is not as gullible as the CEB may believe it to be. If, as we are led to believe that it was lightening strikes or overuse of hydro power generation which caused the blackout, then the cause for the loss of power is simply INCOMPETENCE on the part of staff who are expected to ensure the country with a continuous supply of power.

If - as many suspect - the cause of the blackout was man-made, then it is SABOTAGE. 
One way or the other, we do not need either a set of incompetents or a set of saboteurs holding the country to ransom.

Our country is just coming out of bankruptcy and an economic meltdown. We cannot afford to continue supporting mega loss-making state owned enterprises (SOEs). Even worse, the CEB, does not appear to even have the capacity to keep electricity in the country flowing without frequent power cuts.
Today, tourism is one of our major profit-making, foreign exchange-earning industries. The industry is dependent on an uninterrupted supply of power. Sudden hours-long blackouts and/or frequent power cuts experienced in many parts of the country will not enhance our image as a tourist destination. 

Yesterday’s blackout was reported on major news outlets worldwide. Such bad publicity can only drive tourists away from this country. It also drives prospective investors away from the country.
Again, the sudden and unexpected loss of power endangered the lives of our own people. Yesterday’s blackout hit hospitals across the country putting the lives of thousands at risk. 

Making matters worse, frequent power cuts are making small and medium industries unviable as they cannot meet production deadlines. They are in danger of losing both national and international customers. 
At a time when the country is struggling to pull itself out of a debt crisis, saboteurs and/or incompetent persons cannot be tolerated.

It is the duty of the state to identify either saboteurs and/or incompetent engineers who are unable to perform their tasks, and get rid of them.
Since the state has - even after heaping so many burdens on the public via tariff increases - been unable to provide a decent service to its people, would it not be better to de-invest its stake in these ventures, and hand them over to a more competent body?