Pereira
There are many inconveniences that the municipality of Puerto Dulce has had since it ffinalized the contract between the municipal administration and the company Enelar in December 2021 for the investment, maintenance, replacement and technological development of the public lighting system of La Virginia, since a new concession has not been made and it is not known which entity will be in charge of the service.
The delivery of the concession by Enelar occurred following several years of attempts, since in the initial contract, established in 2003, they had not taken into account the rate increases and network maintenance was becoming untenable.
For this reason, according to the president of the Simtraemsdes union of La Virginia, Jair López, the Public Services Company was considered to receive the concession.
“Enelar had the concession since 2003, but since a tariff readjustment structure was not agreed upon, the concessionaire was unable to increase the tariffs during all this time and they had already been trying to deliver the concession for several years until they succeeded at the end of the year. past and that is why we thought regarding the Public Services Company of La Virginia that began the adaptation since June of last year (2021), to provide the service”, he explained.
Despite the adaptation process that the company began and the decree of decentralization of the public lighting service issued by the Council of La Virginia, for different reasons the agreement was dissolved, the process was stopped and the company was not prepared in all of 2022 to provide the service because, in addition, a reference study indicated that it did not have the required borrowing capacity.
“As the agreement fell through, the company did not prepare to provide the service during 2022 despite the fact that the agreement was approved once more in April and the company paid for a reference study where they requested that financial alternatives will be expressed for the provision of the service but what they indicated was that the company had no borrowing capacity, without taking into account that an investment schedule had to be establishedJair clarified.
He also stated that during this year, since he did not have a concession, contracts have been signed for two or three months for the maintenance and replacement of luminaires; the last contract began on December 13 and ends on December 31 and it is not known who will manage public lighting in La Virginia for next year.
“For June – July they took out a maintenance contract for the lamps to prevent the municipality from continuing to be left in the dark and what they had entered to date was spent on that because new rates were only implemented in August. After that there was no contract and they took out a bidding process on November 29 to deliver in concession the service even though the company never presented the technical study required by the agreement”, he stated.
From the Simtraemsdes union of La Virginia What they ask is that the Council once once more decree the deconcentration of the service and be the Public Services Company of the Municipality the one in charge of the administration of public lighting in the sweet port, which, for the moment, would begin to be left in the dark from next January 1.
