JEDDAH, 10 August 2003 — Water and Electricity Minister Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi yesterday urged top electricity officials to take immediate measures to prevent power cuts, saying the state and its citizens would not accept recurrent power cuts or disruptions to electricity supplies.

During a meeting with Ali Saleh Al-Barrak, acting executive president of the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), and a number of his deputies, the minister advised the SEC to establish a special department to handle emergency crises and prevent possible power disruptions.

Gosaibi’s meeting with electricity officials comes after a major power cut in Jizan last week and repeated power failures in other parts of the country, including residential districts in Jeddah, Makkah and Madinah.

According to Al-Bilad Arabic daily, residents in certain districts of Makkah suffered nearly five hours of power cuts Friday morning. The power cut, which started at 3.30 a.m., darkened most parts of the old and new districts in the Holy City including Kudai, Misfala, Hijra, Rusaifa, Kaakaba and Mansour Street.

In Jeddah, the power cut began about 3 a.m. on Friday and continued for nearly five hours. Residents in some Jeddah districts, including Faisaliya, suffered considerably due to the sudden outage.

In the early hours of Friday the electricity supply was cut in two residential blocks in the Al-Rawdah district of Jeddah, plunging the whole area into complete darkness. Many locals tried to dial the 905 information number but it was busy for the whole 20 minutes the electricity was off.

Tenants of many buildings sweltered in the dark as the city endured hot and humid weather. Many tried to reach the emergency number to alert the SEC office of the power failure, but invariably encountered the engaged tone, making them scream and rail at the power company.

At the beginning of the outage, many left their apartments to ascertain the cause, and small groups of locals, Yemenis and expats gathered for a short time before bowing to the inevitable — that is, waiting for the power to return.

Some were more innovative, especially those families who were mobile, as they left the area to visit friends or relatives who were not affected by the cuts.

Many were watching their favorite TV shows when the power was lost, and most were unhappy, not with the outage or the heat but the fact that they had to miss out on key scenes from the shows they were watching.

Ashfaq Ahmad said: “I was lucky to have friends living in areas which were not affected by the outage. My children were crying so I just called my friends and went to their house. I came back only in the afternoon, when I knew that things were back to normal.”

The SEC expressed its regret for the power failure and said it was caused by the malfunctioning of the generating units at the Shuaiba Power Plant.

Gosaibi has described the power cuts in Jizan as shameful and warned that he would take action against electricity officials responsible for them. “The repeated power cuts that have occurred recently in a number of cities have annoyed citizens as the power failures have caused a lot of inconvenience for them,” he said.

The minister said electricity officials would not be able to blame a shortage of funds as the government had spent billions on electricity and the public pay a considerable regular sum in electricity bills.

Gosaibi said the company should have made early preparations to tackle the growing demand and high pressure on the power grid which comes every summer. “I hope that this will be the last summer with these shameful power disruptions,” he told the meeting.

Gosaibi urged the SEC to increase the participation of Saudi and foreign private firms in power generation. “The increase in power consumption must be followed by an equal increase in investment in electricity generation and distribution in order to remove the gap between the demand and supply,” he said.