THE power outage, which took place at the Bangunan Sultan Iskandar (BSI) Customs, Immigration and Quarantine Complex (CIQ) in Johor Baru today, was due to the malfunctioning of a generator, a state executive councillor said.
State Works, Transport and Infrastructure Committee chairman Mohamad Fazli Mohamad Salleh said the complex was receiving electricity supply from a single source and relying on seven generators for back-up.
“This morning there was confusion at CIQ BSI, when the pedestrian hall suffered a blackout due to maintenance works being undertaken by Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB). This was scheduled to be carried out from 8pm to 4am.
“When the works started, the seven generator sets were working well. One of them broke down at about 11pm, resulting in a ‘total shutdown’ at 2am. Electricity supply was restored at 9.30am,” he told a press conference today.
He said although the e-Gate system was not working during that period, the nine counters for contra lanes were functioning properly and managed to clear those commuting between Malaysia and Singapore.
Fazli said the incident did not affect the movements of travellers between the two countries.
He said the state authority, TNB and state Public Works Department (PWD) were studying new electricity supply sources as an alternative for the complex to prevent a recurrence of the incident.
“The upgrading measures include conducting ‘running tests’ on all the generators and usage load, a departure from the current procedure which does not include usage load,” he said.
Fazli said the damaged generator would be repaired first, adding that it would cost about RM800,000 to maintain all seven sets.
Earlier, Menteri Besar Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi, in a Facebook post, said the incident had inconvenienced the public and embarrassed the state. – Bernama, December 6, 2023.
