Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taichung city councilors on Tuesday held a news conference to press the city government for a promise that there would be no more power cuts following a blackout that affected nearly 4,000 households and businesses the previous day.
Taichung City Councilor Lee Chung (李中) said that city residents who have long had to live with air pollution caused by the coal-fired Taichung Power Plant now feel “wary” and “uncertain” in the wake of the outage, as they have no idea “if and when there might be another cut.”
A transformer plant owned by a private company at Taichung Industrial Park malfunctioned at 4:52pm on Monday, leading to problems at two transformer stations operated by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) at the park that were not fixed until 5:24pm.
Taichung City Councilor Yang Cheng-chung (楊正中) said Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) — a member of the Democratic Progressive Party — must work out a practical time frame to ensure that the nation’s second-most populous city has an adequate and stable power supply.
“After the massive blackout on Aug. 15 and a power cut notification on Aug. 17, Taichung was again hit by a power cut on Aug. 21,” Yang said.
Taichung residents are now highly skeptical of the ability of local authorities to resolve problems and are afraid that power cuts could happen at any time, Yang added.
The councilors urged the city authorities to ask the central government and Taipower to propose a plan to guarantee stable power supply to the city.
If the authorities are only interested in dodging responsibility rather than examining their own failures, the power shortage problem will become even worse, they said.
Taichung Bureau of Economic Development officials said they are still seeking to determine the cause of Monday’s power outage and have asked Taipower to warn local residents of power cuts when possible.
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