Tan Kay Hok
KUCHING: Kuching South City Council (MBKS) has attributed the frequent power outages that took place at Petanak Market here since over two months ago to ‘short of supply’.
As such, the council has submitted its request to Syarikat Sesco Bhd (Sesco) to upgrade the power supply from 150 to 200 amps to meet the rising demand at the market.
According to MBKS councillor in-charge of Petanak Market Tan Kay Hok, the council – as approved by mayor Datuk James Chan – has shut down a compost machine at the market as an immediate step to solve the power supply shortage.
“Our staff has already checked the wiring which has no problem. Maybe the supply shortage was due to the increase in the number of hawkers at the market. The use of electrical appliances has also increased.
“So we immediately stopped our compost machine, and I think the shortage of supply has reduced. We believe there are still one or two times because the electrical appliances used by the hawkers caused some problems. It is not due to technical problems.
“Thus, we submitted our first request to Sesco on May 8, and to expedite the process, we asked again on June 18. We do understand the wait because of Gawai and Hari Raya celebrations, but after Raya, we will follow up again,” he told a press conference at MBKS here yesterday.
He was responding to a recent news report that some hawkers aired their grievances about power outages at the said market. Those hawkers even said they had no avenue to go about solving the issue.
It is understood that Petanak Market is presently fully occupied with 268 hawkers trading there.
Tan pointed out it was inappropriate for those hawkers to claim that they had no proper channel to bring up their problems since the council had already set up liaison committees for all hawker centres under its jurisdiction.
“These liaison committees have been in place for four years and are responsible for communicating with council on how to improve the hawker centres.
“While they can report to the council, MBKS councillors and officers are also stationed at each hawker centre. Even mayor himself visits markets and hawker centres, so they can even report directly to him. It is just not right for them to claim that there is no channel to file complaints.”
He added that those hawkers should have approached the liaison committee or councillors for a solution instead of going to the press.
To a question, Tan said MBKS hoped the power supply issue at Petanak Market could be solved in one or two months’ time.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Sesco, when contacted, said the corporation had responded to the subject matter.
“We responded to MBKS on this matter today (yesterday). We informed MBKS of the connection charge for the upgrading of power supply to Petanak Market for the council’s further action.”