General Hajatiana Rasolomanana, interim director general of Jirama, held a press conference yesterday afternoon to report suspicions of sabotage behind recent power outages. An investigation has been opened. According to Rasolomanana's statement at Jirama's headquarters in Ambohijatovo, this is "a joint investigation into suspicious incidents." While he did not directly use the word sabotage, his remarks clearly pointed to such suspicions.
Journalists were contacted early afternoon for the late-day press conference. The general was accompanied by Jirama's technical staff and personnel union representatives. "All technical managers and the personnel union are here with me. We believe there are suspicious incidents, a threat hanging over Jirama, yet the company is blamed for every problem," Rasolomanana stated.
The sabotage suspicions stem from a series of events in recent days. Rasolomanana linked these incidents to the opening of a parliamentary inquiry into Jirama's problems and Colonel Michaël Randrianirina's July 20 declaration, in which the head of state gave Enelec one week to resolve electricity issues in Toamasina, Antsiranana, and Mahajanga.
On July 21, a fuel tanker broke down at the entrance to the road leading to TAC thermal power plants, causing a 35-megawatt production deficit and forcing load shedding on Antananarivo's interconnected network (RIA). The truck was only cleared at 11 p.m., after peak consumption hours had passed.
Then came Sunday's blackout on the RIA—a complete outage caused by a fire in a medium-voltage cell located directly below lines carrying electricity from the Andekaleka hydroelectric plant to the RIA. "There has never been a similar case to what happened Sunday," Rasolomanana said. "These incidents lead us at Jirama to strongly suspect these are deliberate acts," he added.
Jirama suspects possible "retaliation" through sabotage. A joint investigation led by police and gendarmerie under the prosecutor general of Antananarivo's Court of Appeal is underway. A similar sabotage investigation at Jirama was previously launched in January 2022, when a fire disabled a 30-megawatt transformer at the Andekaleka hydroelectric plant.