City Hall is in the process of erecting a sky bridge over Jalan Coastal as part its traffic and urban transport master plan for the central business district.

A spokesman said the bridge would allow pedestrians to go from Asia City and Oceanus Waterfront Mall, with links to Centre Point Sabah and Warisan Square.

"The plan also includes the refurbishment of the road and drains along Jalan Tun Fuad Stephens, between the Centre Point Sabah and Wawasan Plaza roundabouts," he said.

"A traffic signal will be installed in place of the former roundabout."

He said these upgrading efforts commenced on May 1 and were tentatively due to be completed in December.

"Major infrastructure work along Jalan Tun Fuad Stephens will be completed in August."

The spokesman said the master plan was financed through a facilitation fund under the "Unit Kerjasama Awam Swasta" in the Prime Minister's Department.

He was responding to claims that excavation work being carried out along a section of Jalan Tun Fuad Stephens had given rise to blackouts at a commercial centre and condominium nearby.

Consumers living and working between the Centre Point and Wawasan Square roundabouts experienced power disruptions twice towards the end of June and twice more at the beginning of July.

The first outage took place between 2.10pm and 4.35pm on June 22. Six days later, the supply in the area went off at 8.50pm and was restored at 10.55pm.

On July 4, the electricity supply was disrupted for an hour, between 9.30am and 10.30am.

Ten minutes later, the power went off again and only returned at 11.45am.

A blackout occurred the next day between 10.55 am and 11.15am.

A condominium dweller contacted The Daily Express for help after the disruption on July 4.

She was under the impression that the private contractor involved in the sky bridge project may have accidentally dug into a Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) cable buried on the road shoulder.

Her claims were forwarded to City Hall and SESB. A SESB spokesman confirmed the blackouts, saying that a mobile generator set was deployed to ease the inconvenience caused to its customers in the area.

"Our preliminary investigations show that a private contractor inadvertently damaged our underground line while excavating the verge," he said.

"We are still trying to identify the culprits."

A spokesman for the company, tasked with building the sky bridge, refuted the condominium owner's allegations, saying that its workers were not responsible for the outage on July 4.

He said a subcontractor for a telecommunications firm was partly to blame for the disruption.

The individual's workers had been relocating/ installing fibre optic cables at the time, according to him.

"As the main contractor for the sky bridge project, we are committed and taking extra precautions to avoid any service disruption to the public in the vicinity during the construction period," he said.

A Telekom Malaysia (TM) Bhd spokesman said it had no underground fibre optic lines along the main road in question.