Aegina to be powered up again
Aegina’s electricity supply is expected to be fully restored by tomorrow but this may not stop businessmen on the island from suing the Public Power Corporation (PPC) for lost earnings, as the island has been suffering repeated blackouts since Sunday. PPC experts, who will try to repair two of the three underwater cables that transmit electricity to the island in the Saronic Gulf, began work yesterday. PPC said ships’ anchors had probably damaged the cables but it will probe the cause as two of the three underwent maintenance just three months ago. Until the problem is fixed, the islanders will have to rely on the one working cable and 10 emergency generators that have been shipped to Aegina. For the last three days, islanders have only had electricity for short spells of two hours at a time before power was then cut off for three or four hours. The outages have caused serious problems for hotel owners and other business. «We have had three cancellations already and some people who planned to stay for the whole week have gone home early,» said Pavlos Lazarou, the owner of a hotel in the Perdika area. «Of course, food goes off as a result of the power cuts and has to be thrown away.» PPC said it has plans to connect the island to the country’s main power grid with a fourth cable but for some islanders it is too little too late. «The situation is unacceptable because we have power cuts at least 40 times a year and I am sure that the current problems are the result of poor maintenance of the existing cables,» said Lazarou. Local business owners held a meeting yesterday to discuss taking action to recover any earnings lost due to the power cuts. «We are going to seek legal advice to see if we can sue for damages,» said the head of the association, Nikos Giannoulis.
