KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) managing director Ir Abdul Razak Salim’s claim that SESB was also a victim of the major blackout in Sabah and Labuan last Friday is ridiculous and irresponsible, said Kota Kinabalu Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KKCCCI) president Datuk Michael Lui Yen Sang.
He said the widespread electricity users in the state were the largest number of innocent victims in the hours-long power failure on January 17.
Lui pointed out that Abdul Razak had said SESB would consider compensating users the next day after the power outage, but decided against it on Wednesday.
“SESB initially requested users to provide sufficient evidence on their losses, but SESB has yet to calculate the exact amount of losses incurred by users.
“If SESB is unable to do the calculation, how can they expect users to do the calculation by themselves?”
Lui said similar major blackouts have affected the confidence of foreign investors to invest in Sabah.
Hence, he urged SESB to stop making irresponsible statements and start taking proactive steps to prevent power failures from happening in the future.
Lui was also interested to know if SESB would achieve its targeted System Annualized Interruption Duration Index (Saidi) after the blackout incident.
Meanwhile, Lui called on KKCCCI members to provide their feedback on the power failure to the chamber, including the impact to industries and businesses caused by the outage.
He said the chamber received a letter from the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism recently, seeking information and opinions from KKCCCI on the blackout.
Members are urged to provide information on the time and duration of the blackout, impact on industries and factories and additional responses to KKCCCI secretariat by 12.30pm on January 27, Monday so that the staff could compile and forward the report to the ministry.
The feedback can be submitted via email to [email protected] or faxed to 088-225 299.