The nation was stunned in December, the newly sworn in Minister of Power and Energy pledged that if the crippling power cuts that gripped the nation were not ended within six months, he would resign his ministry forthwith. This was a promise made not in December 2018, when the incumbent Minister Ravi Karunanayake assumed office. No. This episode dates back 17 years to December 2001, when the UNP formed a government and named former Colombo Mayor and Party Chairman Karu Jayasuriya as Minister of Power and Energy.
At the time, the entire country was undergoing daily power cuts that so crippling that it led investors and industrialists to flee in droves. Those who could not flee, invested billions of rupees in importing and operating standby generators to keep their factories humming and hotels open to tourists.
To say that Jayasuriya faced an uphill task would be an understatement. The inefficiency of the CEB and the previous government, and their failure to commission new electricity solutions had left a giant 300-megawatt hole in the national grid. Most, even in his own party, doubted that the affable soft-spoken minister and his deputy, Sagala Ratnayake, would succeed at their ambitious undertaking.
To make matters worse, this was a promise made at the onset of the drought season which was guaranteed to further thin out precious reserves of hydroelectricity. Nevertheless, within six months, or 156 days to be precise, Karu Jayasuriya’s Ministry bridged the power generation deficit of over three hundred megawatts and ended the systemic power cuts that had plagued Sri Lanka for years before.
With the crisis resolved, Jayasuriya set about trying to implement systemic reforms at the CEB, which had by then become a law unto itself and a cesspool of inefficiency and corruption determined to ensconce Sri Lanka’s energy production strategy safely in the stone age.
In this undertaking, Jayasuriya was to follow in the footsteps of former Telecommunications Minister Mangala Samaraweera, who, after assuming duties in 1994, set his sights on reforming what was then an equally delinquent institution, Sri Lanka Telecom. He overcame decades of intransigence and the howling shrieks of trade unions, securing a privatization deal through which a minority stake in the national telecom company was sold to Japanese telecommunications giant NTT, which assumed management of the company.
Over six painstaking years, Samaraweera reformed a company that had survived on entrenched monopolies and overpricing, and had become a breeding ground for political stooges, into a digital telecommunications powerhouse that even today is a leader in internet service, digital television and customer service.
Like Samaraweera before him, as Karu Jayasuriya set out to reform the CEB, he would need several years to study the organisation, develop a reform strategy and get the job done. However, many years he was not to have, as not even two years after he had resolved the power crisis, the UNP was turfed out of power by a sudden dissolution of Parliament and a general election defeat.
In the 14 years since Jayasuriya’s departure from the Power and Energy Ministry, it is safe to say that none of his successors have made any meaningful effort to bring the CEB to heel. Quite the contrary, the rot has set in further still. It is hard to fathom that well into the 21st century, it is still the case that our electricity production planning still happens through phone calls between engineers.
“Machang, tomorrow we have a need for an additional 20 megawatts, so can you release this many cubic feet of water into the hydro-plant,” an engineer in Colombo will say to a colleague at Castlereigh. “I don’t think we have that much water, but I can call and check with a station upstream and call you back,” might be the reply. Despite smart-grids and computer-controlled energy networks coming online across the world, this is what taxpayers get from the CEB, despite paying some of the highest electricity costs in the world.
Ravi Karunanayake is correct to hold his own party accountable for the fact that no new electricity generation projects have taken off since 2014. Although he has not matched Jayasuriya’s offer to resign if he cannot fix the problem on time, in fairness, he has given himself a matter of weeks instead of months.
The seasoned politician he is, Karunanayake is no stranger to the fact that life is not fair. His role is to get the job done, and the media’s is to hold his feet to the fire until he does. Some distribution of accountability is in order. The Government as a whole would be well served by sending their Power and Energy Minister a signal that he is free to select his own team and make heads roll as needed to restore the grid and make lasting reforms at the CEB.
It is past high-time that the officials in charge of the ministry and the CEB are held to account. Former Deputy Treasury Secretary Dr. B.M.S. Batagoda has clung to the post of Secretary to the Ministry of Power and Energy ever since the Yahapalanaya government took office in January 2015, for reasons notorious in the energy sector, that have scant little to do with modernization and reform of that sector.
Karunanayake and the government as a whole must come clean on what it would take to turn the CEB upside down and deliver true reform, as Samaraweera did at SLT, and as Karunanayake himself did as Consumer Affairs Minister while Karu Jayasuriya was solving the power crisis. This is no time for committees. It is a time for results.
The Government would do well to show the people of this country that it is capable of responding to crises and delivering innovative solutions. Should they fail to do so during the course of the year, the lights may go out not just in our homes or offices, but also, in our democracy.