In 1977, the Suva City Council pleaded with electricity consumers to reduce consumption until its engineers could repair three faulty generators at Kinoya.
In an article published by The Fiji Times on June 22, 1977, the chairman of the council’s electricity committee, Cr Raojibhai Patel, said all breakdown in power supplies should cease.
Cr Patel said the council was appealing to the general public to bear inconveniences for the time being and to reduce consumption of electricity so that areas more in need could be supplied.
He said the council was having teething problems with one of the two engines it bought in 1976 from the British firm of Amalgamated Power Engineers.
The engines were still under warranty and had not been officially accepted yet, and that electrical engineers were working hard to set them right.
The other factors contributing to power cuts were increased demand in the city and a delay in the council’s capacity to supply the increased needs.
Cr Patel said power lines were damaged in places by tractors, roadworks and trains, and in other places were deliberately damaged by hooligans.
He said both the Kinoya and Suva power stations were heavily overloaded.
The article stated that a delay of 12 months in the arrival of new engines was caused by industrial troubles in Britain, which had meant the installed capacity fell short of what it should have been in preparation for the increased demand.
Had the new generators been installed 12 months earlier, the capacity of the two stations at Kinoya and Suva would have stood at 52 megawatts, sufficient to meet demands for the next two years.
Cr Patel said that because the two other generators had broken down, feeders at the Grantham Rd and Lami areas had to be disconnected, while other feeders were connected.
The Vatuwaqa industrial complex was a small area within a mainly residential area which suffered when supplies were disconnected.
He urged people to consume less electricity between 8am and 5pm and from 6pm to 7pm.
Industrialists at Vatuwaqa said they planned not to pay rates and seek compensation from the council incurred in the past couple of days because of the power failures.
The president of the Vatuwaqa Industrial Association, Jack Akbar, said the executive committee of the association would decide what action to take against the council.
“We should not have to pay our electricity bills,” Mr Akbar said.
“If anything, we should bill the council for our losses.”
