The blackouts scheduled which was recently announced by the Unified Council of Electricity Distribution Companies (CUED) will be carried out temporarily in areas where 50% of the losses electricity caused by energy theft. Edeeste, as reported, is the distributor with the highest number of irregular circuits.
The president of CUED, Celso Marranziniexplained to Free Diary the details of how this will be carried out “control of catering” in an organized and transparent manner. According to their statements, each affected customer will receive a notification by text message or email, indicating the specific date and time in which they will be without power supply.
The executive clarified that the main purpose of this measure is to regularize users who receive energy without a legal connection, while seeking to optimize distribution networks to guarantee stable service throughout the country.
Time of blackouts
The blackouts scheduled They will last approximately three hours or more, depending on the need of the electrical network at the time. However, regarding the duration of the measure, the executive indicated that it will be applied until the circuit improves.
“It will depend on the quality of the lines and the speed with which contracts are formalized with the clients of these circuits. In specific cases, it could be a matter of months; In others, it could take more than a year. Luckily, there are few recurring circuits that present this type of inconvenience,” Marranzini responded to Free Diary.
“We are calling for collaboration and commitment… The problem of the EDE belongs to the country”President of CUED
Currently, distributors have a level of losses 37% due to various factors, including the deterioration of catering and the theft of service. According to the owner of the CUEDhe fraud Electricity costs the State 800 million dollars a year, so the Government allocates an item from the General Budget of the Nation to cover the deficit of the electricity distribution companies (EDE): Edesur, Edeeste and Edenorte. “This cannot continue,” he said.
Although he did not confirm the total number of circuits that the electricity sector has at the national level, he maintained that the largest proportion of homes and companies that generate losses For not paying the electricity to the EDE, it belongs to the distributor Edeeste.
Improve billing
The distributors have maintained a deficit which exceeds 1,450 million dollars, and one of the factors is the difficulty of charging for the service efficiently, which is why Marranzini announced that they are working on strategies to improve it.
3Millions is the total number of regulated clients among the three EDEs in the country.
In that sense, he recognized that the distributors have committed errors in their invoice calculation process, but observed that it is something that can also happen in any other sector, even in private companies.
“We are working on a system of billing where, to disconnect or reconnect a non-paying customer, it will no longer be necessary for a brigadier to go; It will be made directly from the distributor. Customers will receive mini-messages constantly, not only for outage or reconnectionbut by informing them of measures they can take to reduce their consumption,” he added.
800These are the millions of dollars a year that electricity fraud costs the State.
Likewise, he said that they seek to have a equipment specialized to handle customer complaints and that, necessarily, they do not have to go to Protecom to make their reports. “If they want to go to Protecom, of course, they have every right to do so. But before going to Protecom, any complaints about billingwhere they are committed errors many times,” he said.
“We are calling on the collaboration and to commitment. The problem of the distributors is not a problem of the distributors or the government. It is a problem of the Dominican Republic,” he said.
