Vento Saudale – Finding itself under sustained criticism for the perceived health impacts of high voltage overhead power transmission lines, state utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara has cited studies showing the fears are ill-founded.
PLN spokesman Agung Teguh Setiyoso said the overhead transmission lines posed no health threat to residents in their vicinity, even with voltage as high as 500 kilovolts.
"We have undertaken joint research with the University of Indonesia into the risks of high voltage transmission lines for the health of human beings. The finding was that there is no danger," Agung said, speaking in Pesisir Selatan district, near Padang, in West Sumatra.
"There is no need for the public to be afraid. Concerns about radiation from the power lines is only scaremongering."
The comments were delivered on Thursday during a public awareness meeting regarding a new 150 kilovolt power line running from Siguntur to Kambang in Bayang subdistrict.
Besides the research with the University of Indonesia, Agung said, PLN had also commissioned a study by the Bandung Institute of Technology, which had reached the same conclusion.
"There is no substance to the claims that cancer, lung problems and so on are caused by proximity to the transmission lines. If you hear something along those lines, don't let it influence you," he urged the gathered residents and leaders.
Concerns about the impacts of power lines have cropped up in places along various power grid routes, including recently in Bogor, West Java.
Residents living under 500 kilovolt lines there, such as Ending, 35, of Jampang Kalisuren village, said locals had suffered a variety of ailments that they attributed to the electromagnetic fields generated by the cabling overhead. Itchy skin, dizziness, cancer and even paralysis have been blamed on the PLN installations by those living in their vicinity.
However, it is not only health fears that bother residents but also financial losses, which are much less open to dispute. Once towers and power lines are erected, the market value of land they are on, or pass over, declines, something anticipated in the 1985 law on electrification, which mandates compensation.
On Wednesday, 16 Bogor area residents allowed themselves to be buried up to their necks to protest what they said was a failure by PLN to pay compensation for land traversed by transmission lines.
The protesters, supported by hundreds of people, said they would continue to repeat the action until the company paid them the compensation they said was their right by law. "We are going to struggle for our rights by every means available. And we have buried ourselves here to demand justice," said one of the protestors, Dadang Martadinata.
[Additional reporting from Antara.]