Electricity panel explodes at Ercan airport

An electricity panel exploded at Ercan airport, the TRNC’s electricity authority Kib-Tek’s employees’ trade union El-Sen chairman Ahmet Tugcu said on Thursday.

Tugcu said the explosion had occurred on Saturday evening.

“It is a stroke of luck that a major disaster was averted, and no one was hurt as a result of the panel explosion,” he said, adding that the panel had exploded “because Kib-Tek did not carry any installation checks”, which would typically be required under the north’s laws.

“I ask again, are you waiting for someone to lose their life to do a proper job? As well as the chaos experienced by passengers while that was going on, were the repairs going on? Who cares? How many panels have exploded now?” he added.

Saturday’s explosion comes after two small explosions occurred at the airport in March, with a worker from a subcontracted company received burns on both of his arms while performing “unauthorised” work on a panel box.

The other incidents passed without physical harm to workers or passengers.

Tugcu had earlier in the year said the explosions were occurring due to the airport still operating on a transient current, which means that the amount of electricity passing through its electrical systems at any given time is inconsistent.

This fact “poses a serious risk of danger,” he said, and asked why no move had been made to transfer the airport to a normal current. Then, he said, it had been nine months. The airport’s new terminal has now been open for 14 months.

“The answers to these questions are actually obvious. The installation of the system has not been completed yet,” he said.

In addition, he said “does the ‘government’ not realise they are an accomplice to those who invite death by turning a blind eye to the airport’s operator intervening in these extremely dangerous devices with subcontractors brought in from outside?”

He added that airport operator T&T is “very well aware that [this equipment] should only be touched by Kib-Tek personnel.”

The issue of T&T and electricity also extends to the non-payment of electricity bills, with Tugcu saying on Thursday that T&T is still not paying the airport’s electricity bill.

He told news website Kibris Postasi that T&T are only paying enough to service their debt to Kib-Tek, and are still not paying their electricity bills, despite a contract having been signed between T&T, Kib-Tek, and the ‘government’ to ensure that the debt be serviced and future bills be paid.

As a result, he said, “we are now demanding that the contract be cancelled as soon as possible and the entire debt be collected”.

In June, Tugcu had said T&T’s debt to Kib-Tek had eached 92 million TL (€2.6m), and that the usual procedure for customers whose debt to Kib-Tek exceeds 675TL (€19) is that their electricity is cut off.

However, he said, Kib-Tek was given “political instructions” to not cut the power supply to the airport by politicians from ruling coalition parties the UBP and the DP.