Vietnam hit by rolling blackouts
Individuals and industry across the country have been thrown into turmoil by power outages, with no solution in sight.
Thursday morning, the noise of dozens of machines rent the air throughout HCM City’s District 1 as various shops and restaurants fired up their electric generators.
Not all the businesses in the city centre could afford generators.
Most families said the summer heat was hard to bear during blackouts.
The power outage hit parts of districts 3 and Binh Thanh Thursday, knocking out traffic lights and causing critical traffic jams.
To ensure there would be no power outage from Monday to Wednesday at college entrance exam sites in HCM City, the city cut power to more than 33 medium power lines.
On June 14, the street lamps along Nguyen Duy Trinh Street in District 2 were blacked out.
In the darkness, several accidents occurred.
Three people were seriously injured when two motorbikes collided.
A 20-hour blackout in District 9 the same day even cut the water supply of many families, who could not start their water pumps.
District 9 resident Nguyen said her family had to eat instant noodles for a whole day because of the lack of electricity.
Nguyen said her area experienced blackouts for five days every month.
In the hot weather, the power cuts meant it was too hot for her one-year-old baby to sleep, she said.
Chronic power cuts not only cause headaches for residents.
The production of many companies in the Mekong Delta, for example, was affected by the power shortage.
Duong Minh Bach, the owner of an ice factory in Hau Giang Province, said he had lost a lot of customers as his plant could no longer manufacture enough ice to meet demand.
At times the power went out when a batch of ice was 80% ready and the factory workers had no choice but to watch it melt, Bach said.
He said he had lodged a complaint with the Hau Giang Electricity Co and asked to be informed in advance of future outages.
The power company had not yet replied, Bach said.
Nguyen Trung Thanh, director of the Ngoc Sinh Seafood Trading and Processing Enterprise in Ca Mau Province, said his company was hit hard by the lack of ice.
Thanh said for more than a month the company could not purchase as much seafood from farmers as expected because fishery products needed to be stored with a large amount of ice.
Outages without prior notice also bogged down government agencies.
An official at Kien Giang Province’s Department of Planning and Investment said he was behind in his work as the documents in his computer were inaccessible during power cuts.
He said many people came to the department to apply for business registration licenses.
But all of them had to wait an extra day.
In the central city of Da Nang, many companies and residents have also suffered sudden power cuts over the past few weeks.
Some areas have been repeatedly blacked out without notice.
An enterprise in Hoa Khanh Industrial Park said when its workers were working overtime for an urgent export shipment last month, a sudden outage stopped production and delayed the shipment.
On Tuesday, residents at Nguyen Tri Phuong Residential Area experienced a blackout without prior notice for a few hours in the morning.
Huynh Tan Han, a representative of the Da Nang Electricity Company, blamed supply shortages for sudden outages, adding the electricity situation was still “strained.”
Han said the company had proposed the Central Regional Load Dispatch Centre avoid repeatedly blacking out the same areas.
According to EVN, the total power supply capacity all over the country in July was still far short of real demand, with the company only able to meet 70% of demand.
EVN said the power shortage would continue for months.
Category: Business
