Union panel meets with NEPCO director as power outage probe continues

AMMAN — The head of the Jordan Engineers Association, Ahmad Samara Al-Zoubi, and members of a committee formed to investigate the nationwide blackout that hit Jordan in May, met with the director general of the National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) on Saturday.اضافة اعلان

During the meeting, Amjad Al-Rawashdeh, director general of NEPCO, expressed the company’s willingness to cooperate with the committee to investigate the outage. The two parties also agreed to nominate a liaison officer to monitor and report on field visits.

The entire Kingdom’s power grid was knocked offline on May 21. The government held a press conference later in the day, blaming Egypt for the power outage, (the two countries’ power grids are linked).

Head of the association’s Electrical Engineering Division, Malik Al-Amayreh, who was also at the meeting on Saturday, disputed the government’s explanation for the blackout shortly after in an interview with Jordan News.

Another investigation was undertaken by the Parliamentary Energy Committee, which met with experts and specialists in the field of energy and electricity to discuss the power outage. Members of the panel criticized the government following its announcement that an Italian company was contacted to carry out the probe on behalf of the government.

MP Nidal Al Hiyari told Jordan News then. “Our team of Jordanian electrical engineers is qualified and capable, thus we do not see the need for a foreign entity to take part in this,” referencing the Italian consulting firm that has been tapped by the government to investigate the blackout.

He also stated that there would be possible consequences for the government if the evidence shows that they are responsible in any way. “If the government bears responsibility for this, the government must provide information promptly and without any delays in order to restore confidence in its performance,” he explained.

Zaid Al Otoum, head of the Energy Committee, told Jordan News “Our experts are made up of electrical engineers who work for the Jordan Electric Power Company, as well as the directorates responsible for the electrical system, and they have experience determining the reasons of power outages.”

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