TCN Official Allegedly Rough Handled For Resisting Picketing In Edo 

 

By Ighomuaye Lucky. O

 

The management of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has alleged that it staff was rough handled for resisting picketing in their Benin City office.

This was contained in a statement signed by the General Manager, Public Affairs of the company, Ms Ndidi Mbah and made available to journalists.

According to Ms Ndidi Mbah “At about 1:15am this morning, the Benin Transmission Operator under the Independent System Operations unit of TCN reported that all operators were driven away from the control room and that staff that resisted were beaten while some were wounded in the course of forcing them out of the control room and without any form of control or supervision, the Benin Area Control Center was brought to zero”,

Mbah said that other transmission substations that were shut down, by the Labour Union include the Ganmo, Benin, Ayede, Olorunsogo, Akangba and Osogbo Transmission Substations.

She said some transmission lines were equally opened due to the ongoing activities of the labour union.

On the power generating side, she said that the power generating units from different generating stations were forced to shut down some units of their generating plants, the Jebba Generating Station was also forced to shut down one of its generating units while three others in the same substation subsequently shut down on very high frequency.

She said that the sudden forced load cuts led to high frequency and system instability, which eventually shut down the national grid at 2:19am.

She noted also that at about 3.23am, however, TCN commenced grid recovery, using the Shiroro Substation to attempt to feed the transmission lines supplying bulk electricity to the Katampe Transmission Substation.

She said that the situation is such that the labour Union is still obstructing grid recovery nationwide.

She however said that the TCN will continue to make effort to recover and stabilize the grid to enable the restoration of normal bulk transmission of electricity to distribution load centres nationwide.