Things that I hate #7: PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PT PLN) - Indonesia's State-Owned Electricity Company

Well here I sit using free WiFi, suckling off the fleshy, air-conditioned teat of one of my local establishments NOT serviced by PLN’s Bintaro Power Sub-Station in Jakarta, Indonesia. Would you like to know why? Basically (and this is putting it lightly), you’ll find no greater bunch of idiots outside of PLN which is Indonesia’s State-Owned Electricity Company. The Hater woke up this morning to discover that today his area of Jakarta was due for a blackout. While for the Amish amongst you (and I admit, that is unlikely) this would be an auspicious day, I am not amused. In fact I’m pretty damn irritated. In further fact, if one of my friends threw circuit breakers in my house and said there was a power outage as a joke, I would kill him with an electric bandsaw after I turned my power back on.

I hate power outages, and frequently in Indonesia my hate bladder is inflamed by the PLN simpletons at the helm of Indonesia's electricity industry and their perky little letters they send me announcing an impending blackout. "We're pleased to be able to inform you in advance that your area will be affected on Wednesday of BLAHBLAHBLAH during the times of WHATEVER and WHENEVER!" Yeah. I'm pleased you did too because now I have enough time to climb the mosque’s minaret behind my house with a Winchester .303 bolt-action rifle and blow the head off of the worker you're sending out to disconnect my area's power. You disconnect my power, I disconnect your soul from your body. Even-Steven.

Why the hell can’t PLN maintain their equipment like virtually every other electricity provider can? It is called “system redundancy”. In essence, you maintain two identical, functional sides to your power stations. Before you take one side down for maintenance, you bring the other side up and hot-swap over to it so your customers have reliable power services. I mean it’s almost as if PLN officials and employees have stolen funds over many years from PLN’s coffers so it can’t perform vital but simple upgrades like the one outlined above.

Oh, wait... That’s EXACTLY what has happened. Silly me.

During Indonesia’s great suck-fest known as The Suharto Era, the timeframe when President Suharto ruled over this massive archipelago with an iron fist for over 30 years, some $18 Billion went missing from PLN. Correct. That is a dollar sign, not Indonesian Rupiah. Corrupt officials, toadies and bootlickers within the stinking carcass of this monstrosity bled profits at record pace out of its financial femoral artery. Sadly, this beastly buffet of brazen blackguards and burglarizing bandits continue today to fatten their pocketbooks at the expense of Indonesians who simply accept this heightened level of corruption and thievery as the norm. Ask any Indonesian why PLN offers such shoddy, shaky service and they'll shrug and simply reply, "Oh well. Welcome to Indonesia". Well I say to hell with that! I'd be damn-well embarrassed to use that as an explanation in my own country!


Unfortunately, as is true in any country, it is up to its citizens to fix problems like this. Even more unfortunately, for every corrupt PLN official who eventually nicks a bit too much from the till and gets sent off to the monkeyhouse, there seems to be a dozen more ready, willing and able to take his place.

PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PT PLN), you are all a bunch of vacuous, pimple-arsed nimrods. Stop by my place sometime so I can hotwire your nipples into my house's electrics -- that is, if my damn electricity is working by then.