The problem of power cuts hitting the north has been “solved”, the north’s electricity authority Kib-Tek’s general manager Dalman Aydin said on Sunday.

The north had seen power cuts hitting with increased frequency in recent days and weeks, but Aydin told news website Haber Kibris that the problem causing them has “now been fixed”.

“Both Kib-Tek and [the private company which operates the Kalecik power station in Galatia] Aksa made new energy investments, but when we look at it, the reason for these power cuts is not related to investment,” he said.

He added, “some problems will be resolved by addressing the machines which have not been touched or maintained for years.”

With this in mind, he said that a 17.5-kilowatt diesel generator, which “had been broken for four years”, will be put back into use next week.

In addition, he said electricity consumption across the north in July was 50 per cent higher than during the same month last year, and that this “exceeded expectations”.

He also said that this created problems in the supply of fuel oil to the north’s power stations.

“We had to go beyond the supply programme. The fuel at the bottom of the tanks was used. This fuel was dirty fuel,” he said, with the result of that being thick black smoke billowing out of the top of the chimney at the Teknecik power station near Kyrenia in recent days.

His statements came after Kib-Tek employees’ trade union El-Sen chairman Ahmet Tugcu had said both Teknecik and Kalecik were only operating at half their stated capacity.

Tugcu had said that as of 6pm on Saturday, Teknecik, with its total capacity of 360 megawatts, was only producing 147, and that Kalecik, with its total capacity of 175 megawatts, was only producing 90. On top of this, he said a total of 30 megawatts of power were being imported from the Republic.

This statement was picked up by opposition political party CTP leader Tufan Erhurman, who criticised the ‘government’ for, in his view, leading the north into this situation.

“What I understand from this is that Teknecik and Aksa either operate with half of their total capacity or not at all. In this case, electricity is purchased from the south and despite this, electricity is still cut off here and there,” he said.

He also took aim at ruling coalition party the UBP’s slogan word, “stability”, saying, “the government has been stably cutting off electricity, stably does not give advance notice that power will be cut, and stably continues to fail to explain why the power cuts are happening.”

“They stably order fuel late, they stably damage machinery, they stably inflict losses on Kib-Tek and collect those losses from the public through their electricity bills. By not stably implementing the maintenance and repair plan experts tell you to implement, you create the risk of encountering even bigger problems very soon.”

He added, “while [‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel] said in a press conference in 2022 that he would bring about a radical solution to the electricity problem in 2023, he continues to stably create problems in August 2024.”