The Ceylon Electricity Board Engineers Union (CEBEU) has released a statement insisting that the purchase of long term emergency power must stop and the transparency in emergency power prices must be ensured. The statement was released today (18) Speaking to The Morning, Secretary to the CEBEU Dhammika Wimalaratne said that the trust has been lost and the CEB will be at a loss if the purchase of long term emergency power continues. "We have no idea at what rate the emergency power is bought at. The government says they purchased power, and no one knows the unit price. God only knows if commissions are taken and in return the general public is taxed. This needs to stop immediately as the public are left helpless and are paying enormous amounts of money for power that could easily be generated within the country, " said Wimalaratne. He further added that the CEBEU is appalled by the fact that the general public is inconvenienced by the power cuts and if an alternate was possible, the engineers would have surely not requested for the powercuts. Meanwhile, the CEBEU statement mentioned that the Sampur coal power plant which could generate 500MW of power has been abandoned since 2016 without valid reasons while the Kerawalapitiya LNG plant operations have been delayed for over 2 years.