The recent power blackout of the whole southern peninsula should serve as a late wake-up call for the country before we see the globalised world pass us by. It is merely another symptom of the irreverence with which the authorities manage the country.

They remain insensitive to the greater impact such a fiasco has on the country's economy and investment efforts than just a single day's losses by industrial and commercial consumers.

The quick rush to explain away the blackout as a technical problem covers up the fact that unqualified contractors have been awarded jobs and installing substandard equipment. An audit is to be done, not by independent specialists but by their own consultants already on the payroll of TNB.

With the repeated blackouts and mini blackouts in the country, how are we to believe the TNB report? Auditing of TNB by its own people and its associated consultants is like asking the Enron management to audit itself!

Monorail incident

The casual way in which the monorail accident was handled is another indication of this malaise. We are given a cursory report that a tyre on the monorail had burst and that three people were injured. Thirty minutes after the explosion, the train was running again. It shows the seriousness of the level of incompetence and total disregard by the authorities for public safety. Have we not seen enough train accidents to know what could have happened? The monorail operator may be a private company but this is public domain requiring high standards of accountability.

There should be an independent audit to review the integrity of the monorail system. After the last accident the official report was not open to public scrutiny. Important questions to ask are:

  • Is there insurance cover for commuters on these trains?

  • What actually caused the tyre to explode?

  • Are the loadings on the train correctly designed?

  • Are the braking systems actually suitable for use on these trains, which may have overheated and caused the tyre wall failure?

    • Only an independent audit will reveal this. This is all the more necessary for a company that is going for public listing soon.

    According to power system specialists familiar with the system, two hours before this southern peninsula blackout, the Klang Valley was experiencing an under-voltage situation. Both Port Kelang and Manjung were unable to equalize this and the IPPs were asked to increase the voltage. But the increase to more than 300VARs was too much for the 275/500kV transmission system.

    Did this cause the gas insulated SF6 switchgear/circuit breaker to begin leaking, caused by arcing due to the additional voltage on the system? Or did the switchgear actually fail due to inadequate maintenance? Was the switchgear/circuit breakers correctly designed for this system in the first place? Why was the second circuit breaker also unable to take this additional surge of VARs when the transmission system is supposed to be for 500kV operation?

    Only a truly independent audit by an internationally qualified specialist with experience in power systems operations can answer these questions honestly. Since TNB is a public listed company with international investors, albeit the government is the majority shareholder, the Stock Exchange has the authority to initiate this.

    Considering the increasing frequency of minor blackouts let alone major blackouts over the last few years, how do we trust TNB to carry out its own audit when both investors and consumers are facing losses without any recourse?

    Rash decisions

    It seems that the power blackout also rendered the authorities clueless as to the long term implications to the country. Blame was sprayed all round including, technical failure, sudden gas leakage, even workers' sabotage. Yet no one looked at the decision makers and asked if the people running the system are indeed suitably qualified to run a system such as that at TNB.

    If the government makes rash decisions regarding who runs TNB, then they should take responsibility and pay the compensation to the manufacturers and business affected by this blackout.

    The only thing suggested by TNB after the blackout sounds like another excuse for a new spending programme to throw away the not so old and buy new equipment, much to the delight of those with vested interests. And all this coming from a company with a huge debt surpassing RM30 billion, contractors unpaid and TNB workers having their benefits slashed.

    They seem to have forgotten so quickly the lessons of Renong for now TNB enjoys the financial expertise of ex-Renong experts. The new expert appointed by the Government as the CEO is a man who ran KTM into the ground and left KTM shouldering RM 300 million after one year. When KTM was handed to the Renong management consortium, KTM was cleansed of debt.

    Experts who actually built the LLN and TNB system have asked:

    • Why the billions spent on the 500kV grid has led to it being only operable up to 275kV when in all announcements, it was always talk of this high voltage ring which by now should be fully operational.

  • Why can't Port Kelang operate at its full published capacity instead of at 60% of capacity?

  • Why can't Manjung operate at full capacity?

  • Why did the circuit breaker leak when regular maintenance would have detected a fault?

  • Why was the central region power supply under voltaged at least two hours before the system crashed?

    • Experts who built the system say that one can work backwards to access what happened and yet the deputy CEO could say that he did not know what happened, that this should not have happened, that his consultant recently checked the system and claimed "the system was robust, ROBUST." Yet immediately after the incident, they have already got one of their trusted TNB pay rolled consultants to undertake a technical survey.

    Remaining clueless

    When I was in Parliament in the early 9Os (See Malaysia's Energy Crisis: The Real Issues, Oriengroup 1996), I raised this issue many times and established that unless the review and management, technical and financial audit is done by global specialists with global power system operations experience, we will never have a power system capable of running at it highest level of integrity.

    So we end up with a system which does not generate at published capacity, a transmission system which does not function at designed ratings, and investment stock broking analysts who say TNB is a "buy". People least qualified to run TNB are making decisions critical to our everyday lives.

    We also learn that the water works do not have emergency power to keep the water treatment plants running. Surely when they are supposed to privatize to professional operators they should have known that emergency power was essential so that when the national power system fails people are not left dry as well. Yet the Selangor water works was not prepared for this exigency.

    Disaffected by such a culture in our infrastructure ministries, many of our top engineers and scientists who were responsible for building the infrastructure in the first place have left in disgust. They are now helping other countries such as China, India, South America, and Eastern Europe to develop their industries, using their skills which could help Malaysian industries. India and China are in the super class league and these two economies are now combining forces in many high tech areas.

    But we remain clueless. While the rest of the world is powering ahead, with even countries like Vietnam and Cambodia aspiring to be the next tigers, we seem content to remain in what I call, "a golden age of mediocrity."

    Dr KUA KIA SOONG is director of the human rights group Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram) and a former opposition member of parliament.