IPOH, Nov 6 — A former Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) senior civil maintenance engineer has hinted at negligence on the part of the electricity utility, leading to the mud flood in Bertam Valley on October 23 which killed three people and destroyed countless homes and more than 100 vehicles.

Dharm Pal Singh, who worked at the Cameron Highlands hydro scheme between 1992 and 1994, said it would take only minutes to clean the intake screen at the Sultan Abu Bakar hydroelectric dam reservoir.

He was commenting on a recent news report in which TNB said the intake screen had clogged due to rubbish on Oct 22, which forced the four generators at the Sultan Yussof hydroelectric power station to stop working.

“TNB should be well aware that once the power station is no longer able to operate between 50 per cent to 100 per cent, water level in the reservoir will rise rapidly,” he said.

“It will then be forced to release the water to avoid the possibility of triggering a spilling.

“TNB staff might have caused a blunder by releasing too much water from the dam’s big gated spillway to downstream of Bertam Valley.”

Dharm Pal said that clogging due to rubbish is a daily occurrence at the dam even when he was working there.

“In 1993, approximately 2.1 million cubic metres of water, or almost half the dam’s storage capacity was already filled with sediment.

“We also faced water hyacinth problems, dead animals, floating trees and excessive rubbish blocking the screen during heavy rainfall but a good raking system was in place to clean the screen from rubbish in minutes,” he said.

Dharm Pal said he recommended to his superior to install a by-pass pipe at just above the turbines of the Sultan Yussof Power Station.

“This is to help divert trapped water from Sultan Abu Bakar Dam into another dam located downstream of the power station when its turbines are shut down, but the suggestion was never taken up,” he said.

An independent inquiry, he said, is the only way to determine if TNB was indeed careless in being slow to clean the intake screen.