Malaysia's Outdated Power Company

Never had I faced so many problems concerning electricity in any other country that I had lived in before as I experience here in Malaysia and I have lived in several very small and remotes towns in the US, I have lived in Almaty, Kazakhstan (part of the old USSR) which by all practical means was near a third world country, where the city itself did not have enough money to pay for the public electricity and the power company would shut power off on the streets at Midnight in certain areas, where roads where deplorable and telephone service poor at best. I have lived in Moscow, Russia and St. Petersburg, Russia. I have been in many other areas as well: Amsterdam, Germany, etc and none has had the power problems as what I have faced here in Malaysia. In Ipoh when years ago we lived at my father in law’s house at least once a month if not more the power would go out, either on our street, block or house alone. We would wait anywhere from one to three hours for the power to be restored. One particular month this happened almost on a daily basis for about a week and a half.

In Bangsar, this too would happen at least one a month during the daytime. Power would go out and there would be no real reason ever given as to what was going on. From one to three hours would go by before the power would be restored. Now many years later in Ipoh again in our area this still happens. For the last three days the power has been going off and on from one to two times a day for a few minutes and then today the power went out around 11:00AM only to come back on around 1:30 PM. Then without fail the power went off again around 3:02PM and we waited and waited again for the power to come on which it did finally around 6:50PM. This is not the first time, at least once a month if not more the power will go off from a few minutes to about 30 minutes.

My question to the above is and always has been WHY??? This is 2009, Malaysia claims to be almost fully developed yet time and time and time again we all witness these little events that clearly shows Malaysia (while the will may be there) is not anywhere near really being “fully developed” . Most countries and towns in the developed world have overcome such archaic and backward problems as power outages (without natural storms causing them) more than 20 years ago. They know very well the type of equipment needed to run the grid well enough to protect the public from these events; they know how to plan for future development and an ever growing population. Then again this is the same country that claims it offers true broadband service to its people when really it is much much farther behind then, well, then almost any country that offers internet to its people. This is the same country that has a major company like Astro offering third rate television programs that shut off anytime there is even a sneeze of a rain storm coming around.

I am not trying to complain too much, I just want basic services is all, I just want and expect my electricity to be one when I want it, I expect my internet )that I pay more in USD then I do in the states while receiving far far less speed than I do in the US) to work when I want it and I expect my Cable television to work when I want to watch it, is that really expecting too much, after all they always demand payment without fail or delay and never ever prorate the bill due to loss of service. Oh and by the way, a few years ago we lived in Kuala Lumpur near the King’s palace; we were told we are on the same grid as the palace and therefore would hardly ever have a power outage. (This was told to us by our landlord.) You know what, he was correct, in the year we were living there, we only had one power outage and it only lasted around 20 minutes, now why can they manage it there but not elsewhere?

-----Update February 11, 2009 5:55AM------

AGAIN!!!!!! Yes again, just now the power went out for a total of 12 minutes, what in the world is wrong with these people...are their heads really so far up their &@* that they have no idea what they are doing? Yesterday we were told it was a "bad cable", well didn't they know that the first few hours the power was out, or what about the second outage, or believe it or not the third one that happened around 8:50PM for about one minute or the fourth one just now??? This company really is a joke of all joke companies, but then that is what you have in a country that believes in total monopolies: Tenaga N. Telekom, Astro, Streamyx. The 3 Cell companies: Digi, Maxis and Celcom. I am sure there will be more outages today or this week, let's count how many we get and if you have had some, go ahead and post it on here, let's see how many we can rack up in a month, maybe we can start a pool on it.