NewsWhore
05-23-2006, 02:10 PM
As expected, with the days of wooing voters over, blackouts are back. Several sectors are reporting long 10-hour a day blackouts. The power cuts affect areas where people pay for the service as well as where the non-payment rate is high. Traditionally, power bills in the DR are not known to go down when there are blackouts. Instead, residences and businesses have to dish out extra money to run their parallel power systems.
Finance Minister Vicente Bengoa told Listin Diario that the government had paid RD$6.8 billion in power subsidies this year. The government compensates the distributors lack of collection capacity, as well as paying for its own service requirements.
El Caribe reports that until last Monday, blackouts had been reduced to a maximum two to four hours a day in non-paying barrios. Superintendent of Electricity Francisco Mendez told the newspaper that he has coordinated for distributors to supply 85% of the service, and that blackouts are due to problems caused by recent rains. "People cannot expect us to deliver the same amount of energy that we did on 16 May [election day] which was 1,800 megawatts and 100 megas of reserve," he is quoted as saying in El Caribe.
The blackouts come at the worst time of the year - summer, when the heat intensifies and fans and air conditioners are most needed.
Link To Original Article (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#13)
Finance Minister Vicente Bengoa told Listin Diario that the government had paid RD$6.8 billion in power subsidies this year. The government compensates the distributors lack of collection capacity, as well as paying for its own service requirements.
El Caribe reports that until last Monday, blackouts had been reduced to a maximum two to four hours a day in non-paying barrios. Superintendent of Electricity Francisco Mendez told the newspaper that he has coordinated for distributors to supply 85% of the service, and that blackouts are due to problems caused by recent rains. "People cannot expect us to deliver the same amount of energy that we did on 16 May [election day] which was 1,800 megawatts and 100 megas of reserve," he is quoted as saying in El Caribe.
The blackouts come at the worst time of the year - summer, when the heat intensifies and fans and air conditioners are most needed.
Link To Original Article (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#13)