Inverters and candles gain notoriety in the face of insistent blackouts

National Territory – The growing complaints about blackouts, day and night, continue to dominate the discontent of the population in different neighborhoods of Greater Santo Domingo and communities in the interior of the country, to the point that many people have had to “dust off” or buy back the almost forgotten electrical inverters, and resume the use of candles to survive the darkness and the intense heat.

“Around my house it’s terrible. It lasted a few days leaving every day at all hours, in the evening, at night and in the early morning. Several times I had to sleep on the floor with the child to endure the heat because we don’t have an inverter. We had forgotten about that but we will definitely have to fix it because the service is going from bad to worse,” said Lucia Santana, who lives in Residencial Amanda 1, near Charles de Gaulle Avenue, in Santo Domingo East.

Another testimony is that of Mercedes Lugo, who confessed to the Listín Diario that “in Sabana Perdida we had already forgotten what the blackouts were, but now what is difficult is to remember the moments when there is light. The light goes out every night, it arrives at dawn. Before, if it went out, it lasted an hour or less.”

Carmen Gutiérrez also explained her odyssey to Listín Diario, pointing out that she had not suffered from blackouts until the last works of the subway line that goes from kilometer 9 of the Duarte highway to Los Alcarrizos began. She moved to the Los Girasoles sector. “Now, every night is an ordeal. The power cuts at nine o’clock and returns from 1:00 to 3:00 in the morning. I can tell because I leave a light bulb on so  the children can pee.”

She added that when she married, she was given an inverter and sold it when her first child was born because they hadn’t used it, “but I think we will have to put in the budget to buy one because this is becoming unbearable.”

Protests

The power outages have provoked protests in different communities. For example, tires were lit in Villa Faro, Sábana Pérdida, Los Alcarrizos, Barahona, Pedernales, Puerto Plata, and other towns.
The deterioration of the electric service has been consistent in the last few years, raising the utility’s losses from 29% to almost 40%.

The signing of the electric pact did not affect the reality of energy, and after some progress, the sector’s crisis returned to punish the population.