The Power Crisis – I thought it was a thing of the past!

I am sure most of the readers of my blog in Sri Lanka would have read some time ago, about the Govt. saying that now there will never be a need for power cuts, now that Norochcholai was up and running.

Well all the turbines of N are NOT functioning and the Country has had rolling power cuts everywhere except for Colombo. The Govt. is clever in not subjecting Colombo to cuts because it will reach the news! They don’t want this to be news, as provincial reporters just think it was some tree falling on a power line!  So they don’t get agitated and so the people of Sri Lanka have been fooled yet again by this deception.

I had a friend call me from Kurunegala today, saying his export factory was closed, as there was NO electricity and he was losing a lot of orders or delays!

I know my place on the outskirts of Homagama suffered a long power cut on Saturday, and I checked with Kegalle on Saturday, and they suffered a power cut from 8.30 am to 1.30 pm on Saturday. So this is NOT isolated, and is part of the rolling power cuts to manage the existing power stations as only about 30 % is filled by Hydro due to the drought.

You can go to CEB.lk and check out how the power is supplied any day in SL and see that the Coal Power station is out of service. The Chinese President is coming to open the third turbine that will increase capacity to 900MW which will be about 50% of the Country’s need, but if that one power station is off, then we have to get power from Private stations at Huge cost to the Country and people.

As an aside the dust from Norochcholai is affecting the people and business and agriculture in the Kalpitiya Peninsula as the Govt. HAS NOT been able to address the problem satisfactorily and it is time that as part of the project this is addressed as a matter of priority before we see too many deaths as a result of the fall out of the power station.

There is also talk about carcinogenic elements being expelled into the air from Norochcholai too. Anyway to come back to the main issue I wished to address, it is that the people are blissfully unaware of rolling power cuts that are actually affecting many people and the Media are NOT doing their duty in informing the public lest they fall foul of the Govt. or more likely due to their singular ignorance of what their job actually entails, namely investigate and inform the public about the facts!!!!