The continues power cuts faced by the north after an explosion at a substation on Friday “would have been more widespread” were it not for the Republic stepping in to provide electricity, the north’s electricity authority Kib-Tek’s workers’ trade union El-Sen leader Ahmet Tugcu said on Tuesday.
“They blamed the south, then went and bought electricity from them,” he told newspaper Yeniduzen, referring to statements made by ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel on Sunday night.
“After his statement, they asked for 30 megawatts of electricity from the south of Cyprus. This is shameful. If the south of Cyprus had not provided us with this support, there would have been widespread power outages.”
He then made reference to suggestions made by Ustel that the explosion could have been caused by someone deliberately sabotaging the north’s grid, and said that “every technician with a key” to the substation which exploded just outside Morphou is now “wanted by the police”.
On this matter, he pointed out that Kib-Tek general manager Dalman Aydin had said on Friday that the explosion had occurred because of short circuit.
“So, I want to tell the prime minister this. They should question Dalman Aydin, not the workers, about whether there was sabotage. The real saboteur was Dalman Aydin. Ustel readily comes out after every power cut and claims it was sabotage,” he said.
He added that if allegations of sabotage are going to continue to be made, “they should install security cameras at power stations and substations”.
“Unal Ustel’s talk of sabotage did not just start now. He made the same allegation a year ago after the problem at Teknecik. Even though a year has passed since that incident, no one has been found guilty,” he said.
The incident at the Teknecik power station, which is located near Kyrenia, last year, saw Tugcu come to blows with Ustel, with conflicting reports about what exactly happened at the time.
Yeniduzen reported at the time that Ustel had at some point during the confrontation shouted, “I will finish you, you bastard!” before telling police to “arrest this bastard”.
Meanwhile, newspaper Kibris reported that Tugcu had physically assaulted Ustel, though no charges were ever brought.
The explosion occurred at around 5am on Friday at a substation near the village of Nikitas, around a mile southwest of Morphou, with Kib-Tek saying that it had occurred inside the substation’s central circuit breakers and caused “serious damage” to the substation’s transformer.
On Sunday, Kib-Tek general manager Dalman Aydin said that while the fault at the substation had been “resolved”, a fault has “persisted” at one of the north’s two power stations, causing power cuts to continue.
He said that fault “could be resolved by Wednesday” and that maintenance teams are “waiting for the power plant to cool down before the problem can be resolved
Meanwhile, Ustel had gone on the attack over the matter on Sunday evening, saying that “the Turkish Cypriot people have been at the mercy of the Greek Cypriot administration regarding electricity for many years”.
The north had been entirely reliant on the electricity authority (EAC) until the 1990s when construction of the Teknecik power station was completed.
“When Teknecik was opened, the Greek Cypriot side cut off the electricity which was part of our partnership rights as founders of the Republic of Cyprus,” he said.
Additionally, he said the Turkish Cypriot police, Kib-Tek, and an “expert team” from Turkey will all conduct investigations into the matter of the explosion on Friday and the subsequent power cuts, and that all those investigations would be completed “within 15 days at the latest”.
“If anyone is guilty or was negligent, necessary action will be taken, and no mercy will be given. No one has the right to inflict such hardship on our people,” he said.
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