Chile’s Superintendency of Electricity and Fuel (SEC) reported early Friday that 62,000 households are still without electricity since August 1, when a strong wind storm left around a million families without power.
More than 43,000 people affected are in the Metropolitan Region, more than two-thirds of them in the capital, Santiago de Chile, while the second most affected region is Araucanía, with 10,007 customers without supply.
The prolonged power outage forced the government to initiate a process to revoke the concession of Enel, the multinational company of Italian origin responsible for the service in most of the capital.
The SEC reported on Monday that it had brought charges against Enel for delays in restoring power and for failing to provide information on the matter, and on Thursday it brought charges against the company CGC for delays in restoring power and for failing to pruning.
In the first case, the agency indicated that after learning of the Early Warning of the storm that would affect the central-southern part of the country, companies were instructed to adopt measures to avoid negative effects, such as reinforcing their emergency teams, their customer service teams and giving priority treatment to electro-dependent patients.
“Citizens deserve respect, they deserve available service channels, they deserve limited replacement times and they certainly deserve that the authorities have adequate information to make the appropriate decisions,” said Energy Minister Diego Pardow.
For her part, SEC Superintendent Marta Cabeza Vargas said that “it is unacceptable that customers have to spend several days without electricity and that the standards established by law for restoring the supply are not met,” while she did not rule out filing new charges.
With information from El Universal
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2024-08-10 18:41:26