DARO (Sarawak), May 12 ― A monkey which climbed among the wires on a power pole was electrocuted and injured, causing a 90-minute outage for Sarawak Energy’s customers in the coastal district of Matu Daro on Monday.

However, attempts to rescue the monkey failed as it ran off after the technical team arrived on site at around 2pm.

"The technical team was alerted by the public that a monkey had been seen on one of the power poles but when they arrived at the area, the monkey managed to escape although it was noticeably injured,” said Sarawak Energy in a press release yesterday.

The intrusion was subsequently confirmed as the cause of the outage, after the substation’s transformers tripped as a result of the simian’s electrocution.

Supply to the affected area was fully restored at 3.46pm.

Sarawak’s transmission and distribution power lines run great distances alongside or through forests, farms and plantations and wildlife disturbances is a common cause of interruption for rural customers.

"It is our responsibility to ensure the safety of everyone near our electrical facilities and we take this very seriously because when an outage occurs due to a fault along these longer rural overhead lines, it might take some time to patrol the affected line and identify the fault especially when the outage happens at night, under extreme weather or areas with difficult terrain,” said Sarawak Energy Central Region Regional Manager Nazry Abdul Latip.

To mitigate the situation, Nazry said Sarawak Energy plans to have more covered conductors for rural overhead lines.

Customers can contact Sarawak Energy’s Customer Care Centre at 1300- 88-3111 or email to customercare@sarawakenergy.com for assistance.

Outages can also be reported through Sarawak Energy’s mobile app "SEB cares”, available on Android’s Google Play Store as well as Apple App Store for IOS. ― Borneo Post