• CEB claims investigations are ongoing

Refuting a statement made by Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) Chairman Prof. Manjula Fernando that it had accepted the responsibility for the islandwide power outage on 9 December, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) stated that the relevant investigations into the incident are still underway.

The CEB, which has been investigating two previous islandwide power outages – one of which the then Minister in charge of Power and Energy claimed was linked to sabotage – is yet to release the findings of both probes.  

Yesterday (27), Prof. Fernando reportedly told the media that the CEB had admitted that it was at fault for the recent islandwide power failure. The Daily Morning contacted PUCSL member Douglas Nanayakkara and queried regarding the matter, but he (Nanayakkara) said that queries regarding it should be made from the PUCSL Chairman as it was he who had commented to the media.

“I also got to see it through the media. You can speak to the Chairman and get confirmation regarding the statement,” Nanayakkara told The Daily Morning.

Subsequent to media reports, the CEB denied the statement made by Prof. Fernando. Dismissing the statement as “incorrect”, the CEB’s Media Spokesman Noel Priyantha, in a statement issued to the media, said that investigations into the matter are still in progress.

“Statements can be made in this regard following the conclusion of the investigations,” Priyantha stated.

On 9 December, an islandwide power outage was reported at around 5.10 p.m. and the electricity supply was restored after more than five hours to most areas. At the time, according to initial findings, the cause of islandwide power failures was attributed to a breakdown in the transmission line from Kotmale to Biyagama, which the CEB claimed was due to lightning strikes.

The incident is currently being investigated by two committees, namely the Internal Investigation Committee, chaired by an Additional General Manager of the CEB, and the External Investigation Committee, appointed by the Power and Energy Ministry. The internal committee is tasked with studying the main reasons for the power outage, looking into the procedures followed by CEB officials and employees in respect of the incident, and making recommendations to prevent the recurrence of such failures in the future.

The external committee, which comprises experts including university lecturers and professors, is tasked with looking into the origin of the incident, conducting investigations on technical issues, reviewing the time window taken to restore the interrupted electricity supply, and making recommendations to prevent such incidents in the future.

The CEB and its administrators have a long history of unexplained and unscheduled power outages, for which no one has been held responsible.