Today's rant...
The onus should be on the distributor to curtail electricity feeds to customers who do not pay, not punish those customers who do pay their bills irrespective of which area they live in. I had a neighbor who was often in the US. He forgot to pay Edenorte in advance before leaving on a 3 month trip stateside and in no time at all electricity to his property in a gated community was disconnected. So I know Edenorte can do it to paying customers when they feel so inclined.
The logistics of such an operation would only require an inspector on a pasola touring around a neighborhood for 8 hours a day testing circuits that are on a list as have been previously disconnected. Even easier at night, if the lights are on... Find a reconnected circuit, call in a crew to disconnect it again and remove as much illegal wiring as they can each time.
Clearly people don't feel inclined to pay if they can get it for free without much of a hassle. This chronic theft could be addressed with a bit of determination and political will. Keep adding a $200 USD penalty to an account (yeah I know they don't pay) every time the seal at the meter is broken or a crew has to remove an authorized tap. After it is clear the message isn't getting through, force a PN guy out from under the shade tree to lay a charge of theft.
Why entire neighborhoods and towns need to be disconnected to work on whatever they do every Tuesday boggles my mind. Obviously the system has no builtin redundancy or ability to re-route around problems. Could go on for days trying to figure this out. Lots of problems in this country with the delivery of electricity. Every aspect of the "system" (and I use the term very loosely) seems to be a complete clusterf*ck. If the utility can't do both, you would think they would be good at either delivering power or collecting payment from customers and disconnecting those who don't pay. As it is, the utility appears to be a dismal failure at every aspect of their business.
The govt should threaten to nationalize any private generation plant that fails to consistently meet it's contracted delivery obligations. There is no legitimate reason for a power plant to sit idle for any length of time due to maintenance or lack thereof, insufficient fuel to generate power or any other reason not to produce electricity. Of course the govt also should ensure that performing generators get paid.
Apart from the Ede's locking the doors and walking away, I'm not sure how the situation in this country could get any worse.
