After the power cuts that occurred over the weekend, mainly to users of EDESURthe Buenos Aires Province Ombudsman’s Office filed a criminal complaint against the company.
The body led by Guido Lorenzino asked the Federal Justice “to investigate the company of the Italian group ENEL to determine if there were breaches in the provision of the service”, since 180 thousand users of EDESUR They had power outages.
“denounce EDESUR due to blackouts in summer is something that is repeated every year, which speaks of a fact that has already exceeded all limits. We are facing a company that does not carry out the necessary works to provide a quality service and in this lack affects thousands of people, especially the most vulnerable. It is a situation that must end once and for all”, assured Lorenzino.
After the justifications presented by the company for the cuts, and on which it argued that it was “due to a deficit in electricity generation”, the Ombudsman also requested that an investigation be carried out “if there was falsification of public information” to justify the facts.
However, this is not the first time that the agency denounces the company for irregularities in the provision of the service, in the past it has already filed several complaints with the Ministry of Energy and the ENRE (National Electricity Regulatory Entity).
From the Ombudsman’s Office they argued that the complaint was made “with the intention of investigating the conduct of the company for the possible commission of crimes as a result of the blackout that left more than 180,000 users without service.”
The cuts affected areas such as: Lomas de Zamora, Quilmes, Berazategui, Caballito, Balvanera, Almagro, Flores, Mataderos, Villa Lugano and Monte Chingolo.
The Government could take away the concession from EDESUR
Due to the irregularities in the provision of the service, the Government stated that it is analyzing the expiration of the concession to the company. In this regard, the Secretary of Energy, Flavia Royón, said: “Our pulse will not tremble if that implies having to terminate the concession contract for the electrical distribution service in charge of the company EDESUR“.
For its part, the ENRE requested a performance report from the company “for the purpose of evaluating its repeated breaches and conduct towards users, and the corresponding evaluation of the actions to be followed,” according to Walter Martello, the agency’s comptroller.
