Hundreds of pigs die after power cut

MORE THAN 415 pigs died yesterday in Athienou when they suffocated after a fault cut their pen’s electricity supply.

The pigs, worth a total £15,000, died between the hours of 8-11 yesterday morning due to a lack of ventilation. The animals, weighing from 25-40 kilos each and aged between two to five months, were not insured by the ‘Kaila Brothers’ pig breeding company.

The company is blaming the Electricity Authority (EAC) for the incident, claiming that they had not been warned of the power cut beforehand so that they could have taken the necessary measures.

“If we knew that the EAC would have cut the electricity we would have opened the windows or operated the generator manually since it did not work automatically. If things had happened this way then there would have been absolutely no problem,” owner of the company Michalis Kailas said yesterday.

The company said it will be consulting its legal advisers before making a decision on whether it will take action against the EAC.

According to a spokesman for the EAC, the power cut was not something that they knew from beforehand but was down to a fault in the system.

“It is not possible for the Electricity Authority or any other electricity company anywhere in the world to guarantee a constant supply of electricity for the reason that there could very well be a fault at some stage, something that happened today,” he told state television.

“How could we have alerted the customer in question given that we are not talking about a planned power cut?”

The dead pigs were taken to the Kofinou incinerator.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.