MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Boric angry as Santiago power cuts reach 6th day

“We are talking about a regulated monopoly,” Boric stressed

Chilean President Gabriel Boric Font Wednesday instructed the Energy Ministry to review the agreement whereby the company Enel has been awarded the right to provide the Santiago Metropolitan Region with electricity after the outage affecting some 60,000 households reached its sixth consecutive day.

The company failed on Tuesday to deliver on its commitment to fully restore service, with only half as many customers being benefited with repairs. Boric also urged suppliers to compensate their clients for the damages stemming from their inefficacy.

“I say to the managers of Enel and to the managers of the companies that they should have a bit of criteria and advance the compensations, not to wait for the fine to arrive via the sanctioning procedure, but to advance the compensations to those who have been all these days without electricity. Think of the SMEs, think of the merchandise that has been lost, of the refrigerators that have been affected with the food inside,” Boric underlined during a press conference at the La Moneda Palace.

In Boric's view, electricity distributors “have not complied with the legal deadlines for the reinstatement of services. They have not even complied with their own commitments that they have been establishing day by day in the face of this emergency. They have not complied with the deployment of the committed crews,” he insisted.

“There are companies, such as Enel, that have sought to save money when there are people who are still without electricity in their homes. That, from my point of view as President of the Republic, is absolutely unacceptable and deteriorates, by the way, the credibility of the companies and does serious damage to this sector,” he added.

“They have not even been able, in the case of Enel, to comply with what they themselves have committed to. Emergencies demand, and we know that in our country they are becoming more frequent, particularly weather emergencies, they demand that the companies are prepared and have the necessary resources to face them, that they fulfill their duty and respond to the thousands of families that today are in a very delicate situation, without having clear even for those who have been without electricity since Thursday night, when it will be resolved because the companies have not provided clarity in this regard,” Boic went on.

“I am in favor, as President of the Republic, of increasing the sanctions, so that there is no doubt that the most important thing here is the people and not to assume within the eventual costs the payment of fines, without worrying about the urgency of the people, of those who are today in the neighborhoods without electricity,” the head of state also pointed out.

“I have asked the Minister of Energy to evaluate with all the background on the table these issues, we have to take them with great responsibility. It takes time, of course, we are talking about a regulated monopoly, but it is possible, it is difficult and that is what I have asked the Minister to evaluate based on the behavior of the companies,” he also noted.

Asked if there was any possibility of ending Enel's concession, Energy Minister Diego Pardow replied: “We have been evaluating it for some days, but, for now, the only thing we can announce is that this is being evaluated in all its dimensions, because this would have many consequences.”

Regarding the end of the outage, he also explained that “every day that passes, every hour that passes, this situation simply becomes more and more serious and, let us say, those who are responsible for finding a way to speed up this restoration, with the cooperation of the government, are the electric companies.”

Enel General Manager Víctor Tavera had pledged late Tuesday that service would be restored in its entirety shortly. But some 35,000 remained untaken care of and only around 26,700 households were reconnected.