Supercool Vila Limited, a Refrigeration and Air Conditioning sales and servicing company, is assisting the Parliament to fix the air conditioning system inside the Chamber that broke down during the first sitting of the new Parliament last Thursday.
The air conditioning in the Chamber broke down during the sitting and left everyone in the room including those on the public gallery sweating profusely during most the six-hour session. Towards the end of the sitting a consensus from the floor was sought and the two back doors of the Chamber opened, allowing the breeze to blow in and provide some relief to everyone in the room.
The whole saga was seen “live” broadcast on the Parliament’s website and on Televisen blong Vanuatu telecast showing Members of Parliament fanning themselves with books and bits of paper. One writer to the Letter to the Editor column of the Daily Post called the issue a “national disgrace”.
According to the Office of the Clerk of Parliament currently headed by Acting Clerk Leon Teter, it was the first time the air conditioning had failed during a sitting of Parliament. It says that the system which came with the Chinese government funded and constructed building in 1993 was working fine, but packed up totally during the session.
The Office explained that the problem was partly to do with the same power wattage of 30 amps installed in both the main circuit breaker and the circuit breaker inside the Chamber and this caused the shutdown on the main circuit breaker which could not be turned on again without losing electricity to the full chamber.
The Daily Post was allowed access into the Chamber Monday morning and the air condition was back on and working superbly with the room about a cool 18 to 20 degrees.
A meeting of the Council of Ministers with Director Generals and Heads of Government statutory bodies with government backbenchers in attendance was to be held in the Chamber Monday morning. But it had to be moved to the Vanuatu National Provident Fund (VNPF) Conference Room because the Office of the Clerk could not guarantee the cooling system could not fail during the meeting.
Due to earlier plans for the Council of Ministers’ meeting, a visit by technicians from Supercool had to be moved to Monday afternoon for them to inspect the cooling system.
“Supercool will be assisting Parliament to order a new and same kind of air conditioning system as the one in the Chamber. They will provide us a quotation for the new system and a second quote to come from Rapid Electric to the Office of the Speaker for the Speaker to decide between the two for the order to commence without delay,” the Office of the Clerk stated.