Electrical hazards
I BELIEVE that in Fiji, in the early ’70s, many new homeowners, while their houses were under construction, opted for underground electric and water supply to their properties.
This was safe and immune to natural disasters such as adverse weather conditions. I believe at that time the requirement for underground electricity was to dig 18-inch deep trench from the electric pole to the house and run the wire in a duct with cement covering. Many houses also had the water pipe buried in the same trench.
Now the new developers in the country are utilising the underground concept a lot because it has low maintenance cost, emit no electric field and can be engineered to emit a lower magnetic field than an overhead line, require a narrower band of land to install, and, are less susceptible to the impacts of severe weather.
However, the Water Authority of Fiji might be one such organisation that is at a high risk when there is a water leakage in the property. Before the backhoe breaks up the earth, all the underground powerlines should be located first through risk assessment. This is to prevent accidents, injuries and power interruptions to the community and the Water Authority of Fiji I believe has no such equipment to detect the danger.
There is hardly any risk assessment done and I have witnessed a near miss while work was in progress in Nasinu. However, the tools and methods have evolved through the years and many overseas countries use locators to ensure safety before digging.
A cable locator or cable avoidance tool (CAT) is an instrument used for detecting the presence and approximate location of buried services in advance of undertaking excavation works. In absence of such mechanical device I strongly suggest that any underground power supply installed must have a tag on the EFL post as a precautionary approach that should be installed by Energy Fiji Ltd.
Both the organisations must collaborative for the workers’ safety and the residents who might want to engage in gardening.
SATISH NAKCHED
Suva