CLP urged to explain recent power outages
Lawmakers have called on CLP to give the public an explanation regarding recent power outages in the city, after over 2,200 customers in Wong Tai Sin were left without power for around four hours on Wednesday evening. The power company says the latest blackout was caused by a faulty cable. An elderly woman who lives in Lung Kwong House said she struggled with the heat when her air conditioning went off. "I had to turn on two portable fans. It lasted for four hours. I was feeling so hot. I haven't experienced such a situation since I lived here," she said. Another resident said he couldn't understand why the power company did not activate a backup system. "I had to walk all the way up to my flat. There was no electricity, no air conditioning, and the food inside my refrigerator turned bad," he said. Social welfare sector lawmaker Tik Chi-yuen said there have been multiple power outages in the city in recent months and this is unacceptable. "I expect the government to try to intervene in the situation and ask the company [CLP] to give us the full report on how to, in the long term, make the power supply become more stable," he said. "We are not looking into an individual incident. We are looking at a full picture, whether they need some fundamental changes or essential improvements, so that we can guarantee the power supply is stable." DAB lawmaker Edward Lau, who chairs Legco's panel on environmental affairs, said the threshold in the current penalty system for power companies is too high. Lau said CLP would face a penalty of HK$20 million if it recorded 15 million minutes of power disruption to its customers in a year. Wednesday night's outage would have caused around one million minutes of disruption, he added.