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President vows end to blackouts
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Tuesday that the scheduled blackouts that have been plaguing hundreds of regions in the country for years due to a lack of power supply were a thing of the past
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P
resident Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Tuesday that the scheduled blackouts that have been plaguing hundreds of regions in the country for years due to a lack of power supply were a thing of the past.
The President was speaking at a ceremony to launch what he called the “blackout-free Indonesia” movement in Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB).
He acknowledged state-run electricity company PT PLN’s hard work in helping to end the blackouts.
“I will keep monitoring [the situation]… If it is really successful I will give my full appreciation to the company,” SBY told the ceremony, held in front of the governor’s office.
He said electricity was a basic need for domestic households, industries and the government and said it was concerning that many households did not have access to electricity and that others experienced frequent blackouts.
“By increasing the basic price of electricity, hopefully PLN will be able to supply power to more people,” he said, adding that 19 million families in the country did not have access to electricity.
The government, the President said, paid about Rp 55 trillion in electricity subsidies every year — and that it was primarily relatively rich families that had access to electricity.
He said the subsidy must be reduced and allocated to only those who could not afford unsubsidized prices.
PLN president director Dahlan Iskan said the company had on June 30 ended a major power crisis affecting millions of people.
The power crisis, which called for the widespread implementation of scheduled blackouts in certain areas, affected 200 cities in the country.
“As expected by the government, the crisis ended on June 30. Supply is now sufficient,” Dahlan said, adding that PLN had solved the crisis by renting generators from third parties and repairing damaged
generators.
Ideally, Dahlan said, PLN would have a power reserve of at least 30 percent of total demand to avoid blackouts in the event that generators went down.
He said the event had been held in NTB because the province had been most affected by the prolonged power crisis.
Dahlan promised that scheduled blackouts were a thing of the past, and would only be implemented again in the event of technical problems and not because of a basic lack of power supply.
He said PLN planned to bring electricity to 500,000 people in Indonesia, including 200,000 in Java.
NTB Governor Zainul Majdi said he hoped that bringing electricity to more areas would aid development and especially speed up construction of Lombok International Airport in Central Lombok, which is expected to boost the regional economy.
Also attending the ceremony were First Lady Ani Yudhoyono, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Darwin Zahedy Saleh and several other Cabinet ministers.
