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Businesses, people weary of continued power outages
Enterprises and households are, once again, suffering from regular electricity cuts, though summer days are over.Vo Dinh Thu, Secretary General of Khanh Hoa Tourism Association, reported that the power cuts are an obsession of the provincial tourism industry. Over the last months, electricity outages cost the tourist sector 50 percent of its revenue.
This year, hearing that power cuts regularly occur in Nha Trang, many travelers canceled tours. Unknowing tourists, who accidentally arrived in the city, shortened their holidays and left quickly.
The regular electricity cuts forced hotels and guest houses to buy electric generators. Tran Van Khanh, the owner of Dai Duong Hotel in Nha Trang, estimated that a hotel with 15 rooms needs to be equipped with generators worth 80-200 million dong (Second-hand or brand new). Meanwhile, hotels must spend millions of dong a day more for oil to run the generators.
The Khanh Hoa power supplier always gives inconsistent reasons to explain the outages. Khanh proclaimed that hotels would rather bear higher power prices than regular electricity cuts.
It’s not just the tourism sector that is suffering. Ut Bai in Tien Giang province has been miserable over the last two months because of interrupted electric supplies. His family makes bags used to contain rice for many small merchants and multiple rice husking workshops.
It is now high production season, but the electricity is cut so regularly, he is unable to provide enough bags. “I cannot arrange my production schedule, because the power company always cuts electricity suddenly without notice,” Bai complained.
“The outages always happened right after we finished breakfast and prepared for the production shift,” he observed. “Generally, the electricity is cut for the whole day, from the morning until 7-8 pm.”
The regular cuts in Tien Giang province have been occurring for the last two months, causing heavy losses to enterprises and small merchants.
Van specializes in collecting and husking rice as a small merchant. At times, export companies called and placed big orders, but she could not fulfill them because of sudden electricity cuts. “As a result, the boats carrying rice had to wait day and night on the river. We had to pay additional expenses, while we could not deliver the goods as scheduled,” she revealed.
Most recently, on September 20, Tien Giang provincial power company announced power outage schedules for the whole province from now to September 29. Electricity will be off from 6 am to 6 pm every day to allow for power grid maintenance and repair.
In Dong Thap province, agricultural production has suffered two months of extensive electricity cuts. Duong Nghia Quoc, Director of Dong Thap province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, noted that the province has 750 pump stations that provide water to 100,000 hectares of land per production season. Meanwhile, in the last two months, electricity was cut three days a week. As a result, rice and vegetable fields are like deserts.
“If the situation does not improve, agricultural production will be severely hurt,” he warned.
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