In some cases, power outages have lasted for more than 96 hours, following the critical situation that affected various towns in the region that were hit by rain and wind, causing interruptions in the electricity supply that, despite the hours, are still ongoing and have affected more than 19,000 customers in the region, including homes, educational establishments, businesses and merchants.
This was reported by the presidential delegate of O’Higgins, Fabio López, who criticized the slow process of restoring the supply by the Compañía General de Electricidad SA (CGE). “It is absolutely unacceptable that, more than 72 hours after the event occurred, we have entire towns without electricity supply. It is absolutely unacceptable that the CGE company still has us in this condition. We fully understand the annoyance of the people.”
The regional authority added that, “the frontal system was of a magnitude that had never been seen in the region, even in the country, but this does not justify the fact that the company’s communication channels are not clear or precise when it comes to saying when the service will be restored. Therefore, we demand that CGE provide more labor to restore electricity supply as soon as possible in the localities that are lacking.”
“THE COMPANY HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF THE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM”
Regarding the situation affecting more than 19 thousand people in the region, the regional secretary of Energy, Claudio Martínez, referred to the inability of the electric company to provide concrete solutions. “The company has not been able to solve the problems of the electric system in a short period of time. On Thursday we began a complete monitoring of what the CGE was doing. We went to the zonal operations center, where we requested clarification of where each of the crews was. We have seen that the means of proof that the company provides are not so truthful, and for this reason officials from the Regional Secretary of Energy and the SEC are reviewing point by point if the crews are really where they say they are, inspecting throughout the weekend and we will continue with this.”
Martínez added that the company has not provided an estimated time for when each client will have electricity. “We have requested through the SEC to provide the estimated times for replacement for each major project. They only provided us with this information yesterday – Sunday – at 11:00 p.m. and we are also following up to verify its veracity, because, although it is true that there are poles that are in some rather complex places, the important thing is to have a specific date,” he said.
He indicated that the most affected communes are Rancagua, Requínoa and Rengo, where most of the nearly 18 thousand customers without electricity are concentrated. “Pichilemu recovered in a much shorter time than what we have in the Central Valley and now we are doing a case-by-case follow-up and every time they do not comply, we will notify the SEC so that it can administratively issue what it has to do to hopefully fine.”
The electricity authority indicated that currently 5% of the region’s population remains without electricity; however, at the beginning of the storm, 40% of the region was without power “and the CGE has not provided a real response time and that is what has the citizens upset,” Martínez stressed.
Regarding SEC oversight, the regional director of the Superintendency, Felipe Lerzundi, highlighted that “there have been a number of complications, both in deployment and in transparency in accessing information on the part of the company, and these are elements that, as a Superintendency, at a regional level, but also at a national level, we are investigating to determine responsibilities and the application of associated fines. This begins with an investigation; the rain or the wind may have stopped, but since there was no restoration of service, we continue to gather information,” he said.
Regarding critical points, the SEC director highlighted that “at our request, the CGE presented 165 critical points in the region, with their respective locations, distributed in 50 in Rancagua, 17 in Rengo, 10 in Requínoa, 3 in San Fernando, 3 in San Vicente and 10 in Chimbarongo, among others, and, therefore, our efforts will be in these critical points, which represent a great complexity for the user community.”
He explained that the sanctions “reach fines of 1000 UTM, however, there are problems that are being identified at the national level and it is part of the coordination that we are carrying out with the rest of the regions, with the central level and they will probably end in the formulation of charges,” he stressed.
80 ESTABLISHMENTS SUSPENDED CLASSES DUE TO LACK OF ELECTRICITY
Regarding the situation of educational establishments, the regional minister of Education, Alyson Hadad, explained that “in our region, today, Monday, August 5, we have suspensions in 80 public educational establishments and the Colchagua Local Education Service, mainly due to a lack of electricity and the providers have decided to carry out the suspension, since as the Ministry of Education our main interest is the safety conditions and that these are adequate for our children. We were monitoring the situation with the communes over the weekend and we can report that 13 communes in O’Higgins suspended classes.”
He indicated that they will be monitoring to find out which schools will keep their classes suspended on Tuesday, August 6, and they will receive an answer at around 6:00 p.m. on Monday.
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