STELCO chief: Cause of outage has been identified; we are sorting it out

Hussain Fahmy, the managing director of State Electric Company (STELCO), says that the utility service has identified the cause of the near three-hour power outage that hit the Maldivian capital on Saturday, and are “sorting out” the issue.

The power went out in both Male’ City and Hulhumale’ just before 09:30 am on Saturday, leaving the heavily populated capital without electricity for nearly three hours.

When asked about the outage, Fahmy told Sun on Saturday afternoon that STELCO has identified the cause of the outage, describing it only as “a technical issue.”

When pressed for details, Fahmy said that STELCO is working on “sorting out” the issue, and are unable to disclose technical details at this time.

“We know the cause. And we are sorting it out,” he said.

The latest outage comes two months after a total blackout in the capital that lasted nearly six hours.

When questioned about the reason for the recurrence of a similar outage two months later, Fahmy responded that STELCO continuously strives to ensure there’s no recurrence of such incidents.

The blackout on June 1 prompted President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu to order a police investigation. However, the findings of this investigation were never publicly disclosed.