Jakarta – Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, on Monday rebuked the state electricity company for extended blackouts that hit a large part of Java island, including the capital Jakarta.
Power was restored in much of Jakarta after Sunday’s outage but some residents complained of intermittent blackouts on Monday.
“There must have been contingency or back-up plans, but why didn’t they work?” Joko asked the acting chief executive of the state power company, PLN, Sripeni Cahyani.
Sripeni assumed the job only last week, replacing Sofyan Basyir, who is on trial for alleged corruption.
“This thing will not only hurt the PLN reputation but also endanger people, who are using public transportation such as KRL and MRT,” the president said, referring to two train services in the capital.
“Let’s hope it won’t happen again in the future,” he said.
Four trains belonging to the newly launched MRT were stuck underground as the city was ground to a halt during the blackout.
A back-up power plant for the MRT is still being built, officials said.
Sripeni said the blackouts were caused by a disruption to a transmission plant in Central Java.
She said there would be rolling blackouts before power was fully restored.
“We apologise the repair work has taken a while,” she told Joko.