Madang without electricity

RESIDENTS in Madang, including business houses have been without power since yesterday, says Madang Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Kevin Murray.
Murray said to complicate things, the powerhouse in Madang has had a shortage in fuel supply from Puma Energy.
Puma Energy country managing director Hulala Tokome told The National that they were managing the situation with PNG Power Ltd (PPL) but could not comment further due to confidentiality agreements between the two companies.
“We lost power between 10am and 12pm yesterday,” Murray said.
“To complicate things, the power house here has no fuel and it’s been a complete blackout.
“The only people who have power are people with standby generators.
“Most business houses have standby generators. I found out that the reason for no fuel at the power house is because Puma stopped supplying because of nonpayment.
“We have since been told that payment was made yesterday by the Government and they are now going to supply fuel to the power house and we are hoping that we will have fuel supplied sometime today and have power back in Madang but the problem is there might be load shedding.
“You can’t call people with mobile phones because most of them have their phones off because of no power to charge.
“Not only that, the internet has been off since yesterday, all the internet services, Vodafone, Digicel, Bmobile, Telikom, all the internet services are off. We couldn’t get the internet on our mobile phones until today (yesterday) the Vodafone service came back on.”
Murray said the disruption to internet impacted businesses who could not conduct business online.