Businesses can seek refund over losses: Bekker

Businesses can seek refunds from PNG Power Ltd if they incur losses during power outages, says managing director Flagon Bekker.
He said as customers, the businesses were entitled to claim for the losses incurred.
“If we’re not delivering a service and you’re paying for a service, you should have a refund,” he said.
“I encourage businesses to do that.”
But he said PNG Power would have to investigate the requests on their merit.
“So the process is that they must raise it and quantify it.
“We will review it, which will take a while because we will have to recheck everything,” Bekker said.
“But on cases where we found that the customers paid for power which they didn’t get, we have refunded.”
Bekker said it was no longer necessary to bring in an expert to change the tap-changer on the main distribution transformer that went out, as initially intended.
“When we looked at the initial solution, it was going to take us five months to remove the tap-changer, replace it.
“That’s where we needed the specialist to come in,” he said.
He said the alternative was to replace the transformer itself.
“The tap-changer is something inside the transformer.
“So we took a transformer from another project, brought it in and reinstalled it.
“It’s not the ideal way to do it because we now have to buy a new transformer.
“But that solution is one way to win it which saved us three months.”
He said the issue of continuous power outage should return to normal by this week.