Anyone caught vandalising electricity supply infrastructure will be prosecuted.
PNG Power CEO Alex Oa said the electricity company will prosecute suspects whose actions disrupt electricity supply.
“PPL will not hesitate to prosecute those found to be vandalising its properties and have them pay the full cost of the revenue lost during an outage, and cost of repair of the damage caused or face imprisonment.”
The statement followed a power outage last week in Port Moresby.
“The penalty may be in the hundreds of thousands of Kina, like the incident that occurred on the Port Moresby system last Wednesday, which was an act of vandalism,” Oa said.
“The amount lost is around K400,000 during the 10-hour power outage.
“The fault caused a short circuit on the system at 4.41am, forcing the LNG Power Station to go offline and putting a huge burden on our other power stations, which resulted in them shutting down.
“Upon inspection of the transmission lines by PPL personnel, it was found that foreign objects were thrown on the line towards the LNG Power Plant, at Koukou village outside of Port Moresby.”
And another act of vandalism caused a fault on the transmission line to the LNG Power Station at 7am last Friday.
The fault, yet again, cut off electricity supply from the LNG Power Station, forcing PPL to carry out load shedding in the city.
PPL personnel again found foreign objects on the line, had it removed and power supply was fully restored at midday.