A client of mine—a property developer—dropped in this morning for a business visit. We went on to talk about the general economy of Malaysia, and Sabah in particular. This topic, that topic, and then we talked about the increasing prices of steel in the construction industry. He said within months the price of steel had almost doubled. Maybe he was exaggerating a bit, but there is a lot of truth in what he said too.
Our client was obviously concerned with the price hike as it could effect the profitability of his development projects. But for the rest of us Sabahans, the effect of the price hike was beyond the prices of houses and shops.
The price of scrap metal is so attractive that some idiots actually went to the extent of cutting some of the metals at the foot of an electrical tower in Inanam. During a heavy downpour yesterday evening, that electrical tower collapsed and caused a power trip at the Sepangar power plant. The net result was that most of the major towns throughout Sabah were affected by the power outage. Remedial works were carried out throughout the night and power was restored in stages. I was still tossing around miserably in bed after midnight when finally the electricity supply was restored to my home.
Imagine those people in the interior areas who've been living without electricity for generations up to now. We went through several hours without power and it was like hell! We're not used to the cold water for our showers; no fans or air-conditioners for our comfortable slumbers; no computers to make entries into our blogs (smile); and we grumble for missing the interesting interview with Tun Dr M on the telly last night. Amazing how we take electricity supply for granted, huh?
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Update: More in The Star.
For the sake of RM40 in the worth of scrap metal, some idiots would ignore the inconvenience and millions of Ringgit in losses to other people throughout Sabah. I really hate myself for wishing the tower to collapse on those idiots while they're cutting the metal struts.
3 comments:
so the collapse was due to that? gosh...
Yes, ck, that's the reason for the collapse of the tower.
I tried to call the SESB hotline—15454—for hours last night to find out what's going on with the power supply. But I guess since the power outage affected almost the whole of Sabah, the hotline was all jammed up. So I couldn't get through.
Then this morning, a friend of mine said that there will be another power outage this evening from 7pm till tomorrow morning, for "repairs" of the tower. I was contemplating checking into a hotel, but before that I called up SESB's 15454 just to make sure. I obtained 2 information. Firstly, they have no plans for yet another powercut; and secondly, that last night's collapsed was because someone cut up some portions of the footing of the tower resulting in its collapse during the heavy rain.
bizzare! more so than stealing the electrical cable for the copper/metal in it.
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