Sri Lanka It's Happening

May 30, 2004

Today we had a 'scheduled power cut' supposedly for maintenance work. Sri Lankans unfortunately rarely work to a schedule (they probably take the president as an example, she even kept prince Charles waiting for a few hours on the occaision of our 50th independence anniversary). The power cut was supposed to end at 5:00pm but went on past 6:30.

This outage is nothing compared to the handfull of power cuts we have everyday. On Saturday we had a very brief but intense shower which lasted for about half an hour. During this period it poured down in buckets and the power failed three times. Which is the behaviour that we have come to expect

So in seems when it rains you have power cuts, unfortunately when it doesn't rain it gets worse. A large percentage of our electricity is generated at hydro power stations. When the dams were built hundreds of thousands of acres of forests went under water, which resulted in a the rain fall patterns being altered. To make matters worse the catchment areas are being encroached on with the backing of our corrupt politicians.

If you believe what the enviorenmental activists say, the ministry and the electricity board is purposely neglecting water management. The reason they can get their dirty hands dirtier by setting up a dirty old coal power plant.

Posted by raditha at May 30, 2004 10:44 AM