KUCHING, Jan 7: A third party contractor damaged Sarawak Energy Berhad’s (SEB) power cable from New Pujut to the Permyjaya substation yesterday, affecting electricity supply to large parts of Miri on Friday.
A press release from SEB yesterday said that the incident occurred just before noon when the contractor was doing excavation work to repair a fibre optic cable damaged by construction work on the Pan Borneo Highway.
Supply to all affected areas was fully restored via Lutong 33KV Substation at 2pm while repair works was carried out. However, due to the severity of the damage to the cable, the repair work was not able to be completed before the evening peak load, causing overloading at Lutong 33KV Substation, and causing the substation to trip at around 7.46pm.
The SEB technical team immediately commenced load diversion and supply was fully restored to all areas at around 9.45pm.
Areas affected included Desa Indah, Desa Bahagia and Bandar Permyjaya. Other areas experiencing tripping related to the incident included Visa Perdana, Lutong, RPR Batu 6, Desa Pujut, Pujut 7 and part of Senadin and Kuala Baram.
In the last two years, SEB has recorded a total of 108 cases of cable damage by third party contractors, costing over RM1 million.
Contractors scheduled to do excavation works are reminded to exercise caution and to check with SEB on cable layout and positions before commencing work, to avoid damaging utility equipment cables and inconveniencing households and businesses.
In the event of damage to cables, contractors should immediately inform SEB’s Customer Care Centre of the incident by calling 1-300-88-3111 to enable the technical team to respond immediately.
At the same time, SEB will continue to create awareness and deploy its safety officers to conduct safety briefings to show contractors cable routes so as to enable them to take note of and be more careful on where they excavate. More cable surveillance teams will also be deployed to patrol and monitor construction sites and provide assistance to identify cable routes on site. — DayakDaily
