The National Legislative Assembly was supposed to discuss the speech of the President of the Republic delivered to the opening ceremony of the parliament’s first session of 2013, but they failed to do so owing to power cuts in the assembly hall.
The national parliament has electricity from a fuel generator, which is normally maintained by a Chinese company. Problems with the generator caused delay to the sitting yesterday, which was supposed to begin at 10:00 AM. Members were seen withdrawing one by one shortly after the ringing of the alerting bell at 11:00 AM.
The Deputy Chairperson of the Committee of Information, Telecommunications and Culture Hon. Mary Atong said the sitting was done in the Freedom Hall rather than the Assembly Main Hall because of the power problem.
She said that the power problem is not connected with austerity measures but could be a technical problem.