Power companies’ blackouts aim to hush lush contracts

Santo Domingo.- Power companies are taking some of their plants out of service to pressure the government not to review the highly questioned lucrative contracts.

A source close to the electricity sector quoted by elnacional.como.do revealed that the latest spate of rolling blackouts nationwide stem from power companies shutting down their plants as leverage against the government’s intention to change contracts underwritten during the privatization process during Hipolito Mejia’s term (2000-2004), and include benefits such as indexing.

The companies oppose revising the energy contracts because they prefer getting paid for their installed capacity instead of the energy served, as the agreements stipulated.

Holidays

At the onset of the holiday season the Itabo 2 plant was taken out of service without apparent justification, and would remain off line until January.

Yesterday the distribution Edesur had 60 circuits out of service with 426,276 customers affected. In addition to Itabo the plants San Felipe, Barahona Coal, Los Mina 6, Monte Rio and Haina Gas were also off line.

"Those plants are off as a pressure mechanism for the Government to desist from continuing the process of reviewing the contracts," the source said, adding that the power companies would even leave the country without power, to try to reach its goals: ”crush the authorities.”