Dayasiri names CEB as number one culprit for power crisis, urges it be restructured

… calls for increasing country’s capacity to tap solar energy

The only solution to the power crisis was to restructure the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), State Minister Dayasiri Jayasekera said in Parliament on Thursday.

“Successive governments have realised the need to build low cost electricity generating power plants. Ministers have presented Cabinet papers for such projects, but everything stops at the CEB,” he said.

During the Yahapalana government there had been a plan to generate one gigawatt of electrcitiy from solar energy and agreements had been reached with Korea, China, Japan and India to construct LNG plants amounting to 1,400 megawatts, Minister Jayasekera said.

“However, the CEB has sat on these proposals. The current government has come out with excellent ideas. But for two years we have not been able to add a single megawatt to the national grid. So, the problems do not lie with the government. The problem is the CEB and this institution has to be restructured,” Jayasekera said.

State Minister Jayasekera said that a proposal to purchase emergency power had been presented to Parliament and the owners of the power plants would make a killing at the expense of the state coffers.

“The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) will supply them with diesel at about Rs. 120 and furnace oil at about Rs. 110. These are subsidised prices. However, the owners of the power plants will sell electricity at exorbitant prices. On the other hand, a unit of electricity generated by solar power costs only Rs. 15,” he said. State Minister Jayasekera said other nations in the region produced electricity at lower prices because they had reformed the power sector.