THE power outage that hit Boulia on November 10 comes as no surprise to the Electrical Trades Union, which yesterday laid the problem at the state government’s jobs-cut policy.
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Boulia was sweltering in 41 degrees at the time of the outage and many houses and businesses were affected.
That, says Electricity Supply Industry Coordinator Stuart Traill, is not good enough.
“While we are currently trying to get to the specifics of how this has occurred we can make the following points,” he said.
“I would make the point though that our members across Ergon are reluctant to comment publicly on any issues like this on the basis that they have been threatened with disciplinary action through to termination if they speak out.
“What we can say is when you take 1750 jobs out of the public electricity industry as the LNP government has done in little over 2 years, this is a direct result.
“The specific area that provides relief for Boulia and other remote communities has undergone a significant restructure and a 20 per cent reduction in frontline positions.”
According to Mr Traill the situation will not improve unless the government backs away from further job cuts.
“It should be further noted that Ergon, under instruction from the LNP government has indicated it wants to reduce its ‘headcount’ by a further 595 jobs over the next four years,” Mr Traill said.
“Further, we know from experiences interstate and overseas that when assets are privatised either through long-term lease as in South Australia or all-out sale as in Victoria, job numbers are slashed further.”
Contacted by the North West Star about 1pm on the day of the outage, Ergon Energy Townsville Corporate Communications manager John Fowler said the company had no indication of a
widespread outage on its Boulia network .
Mr Fowler later said there was an issue with the town’s generator, but power was restored to all customers by 2.30pm.
“The power station attendant was in Mount Isa at the time,” he said.
“The power station can be activated remotely, but on this occasion could not because of technical issues until his return from Mount Isa.”