Recent reports of power failures in different parts of Saskatchewan are generating fierce comments from NDP opposition politicians.

"Quite simply power is unreliable for far too many," Trent Wotherspoon, the NDP's critic for SaskPower, told CBC News. "It's causing damage, it's causing stress, and this is the dead of winter."

Recently, people in the Estevan area have noted repeated cases of power failures — as frequently as five times in one month.

Wotherspoon was especially critical of a government move to take $120 million dollars from the provincial Crown corporation, as a dividend.

Wotherspoon said the money should be spent on fixing SaskPower's infrastructure.

Robert Watson, the president of SaskPower, told CBC News that the company keeps close watch on power outages.

"We are having some," Watson said. "Any outage is not acceptable. Unfortunately when you have a grid our size, the size of our territory and the amount of lines there, you're going to have outages."

Watson added that the number of outages in 2012 was very close to the numbers reported in 2010 and 2011.

With files from CBC's Dan Kerslake