PNG POWER chief executive officer (CEO) Patrick Mara is currently in the process of new roll-out plans and projects to drastically upgrade and improve the company’s ailing infrastructure.
Mr Mara said this in his letter to the National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop last Friday
He was replying to Mr Parkop’s letter enquiring why PNG Power was continuously load-shedding power supply in such an unreliable manner to the residents of NCD which is the nation’s capital and centre of businesses.
Mr Mara said in his letter: “As you are aware, prior to 2002, Elcom was a Government department and as such it was subject to the “consolidated fund” process of budget allocation.”
He added: “The level of investment into the proactive care and replacement of the (Elcom, and now) PNG Power (PPL) has been left with legacy issues.”
Mr Mara said that in effect, the plant varies between 15 and 40 years in age and is in need of substantial investment of both money and resources.
“This is not an excuse , but it is simply factual,” Mr Mara said in his letter.
He said, however, the PPL now has plans in place as well as projects in their delivery phase for maintenance, refurbishment and or replacement of “our ailing infrastructure that includes generatorsplus transmission/distribution assets.
“I am presenting some relevant plans/projects to POMCCI in early April of this year,” he said.
“This well be the third installment and will report on the status of the rollout of previous plans/projects as well as new initiatives,” he added.
Mr Mara said he would request the POMCCI to personally invite Mr Parkop to this presentation.
Mr Mara said he did not think Mr Parkop was adequately briefed by his advisers of the exact situation with PPL.
“These matters are complex and voluminous,” he said.
He added that competition in generation is being pursued aggressively by PPL and the shareholders.
“There are already other independent power producers (IPPs) within the electricity sector and these IPPs are complete with existing PPL generation facilities,” Mr Mara said.
“Competition is only a small subset of the public private partnership solution to essential infrastructure to enhance the social and economic development of this nation,” Mr Mara said.
He added that PNG “was thirsting for solutions” to the PPL problems.
“Money, manufacturers, competitions, skills development are the basis of solutions,” he said.