Linden suffered a spate of power outages yesterday that disrupted businesses and angered residents.
Over a two-hour period, the town experienced approximately six outages, which forced many businesses to close their operations for the day, including sections of the bauxite plant. NCN Linden indicated that one of its transmitters was burnt as a result of the situation, and it was considering suspending transmission for the rest of the day.
The town is supplied with electricity produced by the Bosai power plant and when contacted a senior officer of the power plant said the outages were a result of a truck damaging a number of power lines and breaking a pole. He said the truck, which was contracted by the company to haul bauxite, got entangled with a few cables while driving with its tray up. “What happened is that one of those contract trucks, I don’t know if he had some problem or what, but was driving with the tray up and pulled down some cables and broke a pole,” he said.
This resulted in a heavy surged feedback to the power plant, causing damage and sending the community into darkness. The incident occurred at Bosai’s operation along the Washer-pond road and the pole which was broken was located in the bauxite plant areas.
The official said the problem had been rectified and the company would be vigilant in ensuring there was no further inconvenience. However, up to yesterday afternoon, the outages were still continuing.
Recently the town was plunged into hours of darkness without any apology or explanation from the company.
Investigations indicated that the power plant had experience some technical difficulties, which it has since rectified. Bosai produces electricity from which it feeds the bauxite operations at Linden. The company sells electricity to the Linden Electricity Com-any Incor-porated (LECI). LECI sells portions of that electricity to residents and commercial entities on the Mackenzie shore and to the Linden Utilities Services Coop Society Limited (LUSCSL), which in turn sells to residents and businesses at Wismar.
