Power Outage At Public Strategic Assets Due To Sabah Govt S Incompetence

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The Sabah government has been accused of incompetence after a power outage at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (HQE) in Kota Kinabalu, as a lawmaker calls for investment into public strategic assets to prevent such problems.
Kota Kinabalu MP Chan Foong Hin said that allowing such an incident to happen indicates that the state administration cares little for the people’s welfare.
"The power outage that occurred at HQE yesterday had forced at least one surgery to be stopped midway pending transfer to another hospital where the surgery could continue," he said in a statement today.
The DAP lawmaker pointed out that this was not an isolated case as power shortages and disruption of water supply had also happened in Kota Kinabalu International Airport, industrial parks and business premises in the state.
"The fact that our government allows power shortages and water outages in hospitals and airports, which resulted in these strategic assets to temporarily shut down, shows that either our administration is incompetent or that the decision-makers do not care about the basic welfare of the people," he added.
Kota Kinabalu MP Chan Foong HinChan urged the state government to reveal how it plans to use the special grant for Sabah, which he said was increased by nearly fivefold from RM26.7 million to RM125.6 million for 2022.
"All power and water utilities are under state agencies. I would like to call upon the state government to put more money into ensuring that public strategic assets no longer suffer from outages.
"Sabah can forget about retaining human capital or attracting investors into the state if public strategic assets were to suffer from such intermittent shutdowns.
"No one will be willing to stay and invest in an environment that is not conducive for business where even basic welfare is lacking," he said.
The power outage at the HQE occurred when two patients were already lined up for surgery.
The hospital’s transformer suffered a failure at 12.05pm yesterday, and repair work is expected to last until 2pm today.
It was reported that power was restored to some parts of the hospital at around 4.40pm yesterday after Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd supplied three backup generators to supplement the hospital's generators. - Mkini

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