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Friday, June 3, 2011

Putrajaya misled public over power deals, says DAP

The DAP has accused the Najib administration of “at best misleading and at worst lying” today for saying it cannot declassify controversial power purchasing agreements (PPA) inked with independent power producers (IPP).

Party publicity chief Tony Pua cited a 2006 interview by former Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) chairman Tan Sri Ani Anope who claimed the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) in the Prime Minister’s Department had strong-armed the national power company into agreeing to inflated prices with the IPPs.

“The government has a vested interest in not declassifying these contracts, for it was the Barisan Nasional (BN) government itself who dictated the terms of these contracts to be signed. Now it just does not want the public to know it prioritised the astronomical profits of these IPPs at the expense of the man-on-the-street.

“The responses from the minister are at best misleading and at worst a lie,” Pua(picture) said in a statement today.

The Petaling Jaya Utara MP said the reluctance of the government to make public the PPAs shows that it is “powerless when needed to protect the interest of the rakyat, but powerful where maximising the profits of IPPs are concerned.”

The Najib administration has been under siege from the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) pact for over a month for allegedly protecting the interests of IPPs in lopsided deals while electricity tariffs surged by an average 7.1 per cent on Monday.

Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Seri Peter Chin had said Putrajaya had no power to reveal the PPAs as the deals were between private companies.

But Pua said that Ani had told The Star on June 26, 2006 that “there was no negotiation. Absolutely none. Instead of talking directly with the IPPs, TNB was sitting down with the EPU. And we were harassed, humiliated and talked down every time we went there.”

“After that, my team was disappointed. The EPU just gave us the terms and asked us to agree. I said no way I would,” Ani had said.

Ani was also reported to have said that the agreed prices were “all fixed up. (They said) this is the price, this is the capacity charge and this is the number of years. They said you just take it.”

Pua said Ani also disclosed an agreement with an IPP, believed to be Genting Sanyen, for the power company to purchase electricity at 12 sen per kilowatt hour but was forced by the EPU to raise it to 14 sen, while other IPPs received 16 sen.

Putrajaya announced the 7.12 per cent hike in electricity rates in an effort to trim a subsidy bill that would otherwise double to RM21 billion this year and promised the hike will not affect 75 per cent of domestic consumers.

But power prices will now rise by as much as 2.3 sen per kWh in areas taking TNB’s electricity supply, a potential source of public anger just ahead of a general election expected within the year.

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