Because the electric business is a big business. Haven't you heard? The Power generators threatened that "they did not care about to leave the whole country switched off" now that the Government is trying to push for contract-renegotiation (famous Madrid Accords).
These "acuerdos" stipulate a minimum price the government pays for each kWh to each plant, and even a minimum payout regardless of plant generation output. There are some plants where it is so expensive to generate, that the government prefers to have them off and not buy from them and pay a monthly "minimum payout". Those payouts are in millions of dollars per month. It's a great business, where you own a half-defunct power plant with obsolete equipment where it costs 20 or 30 pesos per kWh generated, and you do not generate, government pays you couple of millions of dollars every month in order NOT TO generate (because otherwise they would have to buy at 20-30 pesos per kWh), and your only payroll are three guachimen who patrol the abandoned plant.
And when you try to renegotiate, other plant owners (cartel, anyone?) start to threaten to switch off the whole country during Christmas-time. And they make good on their threats, by entering some plants into "unscheduled maintenance" just to show off the government what they "can do".
That's why it's so difficult to fix it.
Problem One.
Expensive generation. Current plant owners refuse to renegotiate current contracts (disadvantageous to government) by kicking and hitting and threatening all around.
Problem Two.
Lack of new power plant construction in the past decade, demand growing, output steady. Current plant owners refuse to allow new power generators into market by kicking and hitting and threatening all around.
Problem Three.
Lack of investment in decade past results in currently unstable and aged network (the 60's, anyone?), both very high, mid, and low tension (local distribution). Transmission losses on VHT are over 15-20%.
Problem Four.
Lack of investment and obsolete equipment PLUS a sh!tty work by local employees results in unstable and outage-prone local distribution network. Our circuit has huge outages every 2 months. 6-7 weeks good almost no power interruptions, then 2 weeks outages, sometimes 2-3 per day, from 1 to several hours. Local transmission losses are about 15%.
Problem Five.
Last problem. It's not the first in the line. It's the last one. Non-paying customers. This has been improved dramatically. Just check circuitos.gov.do and see details about any circuit you select, you can see % of paying customers. Losses from non-payment are 15%.
When you have losses on-network on high and medium tension networks (before hitting local distribution network) of over 30%, AND you pay generators huge over-the-market rates, THEN you have a huge problem and that's why it is DIFFICULT for anybody to fix it.
One solution: Expropriate all the power plants. Get some professional managers from Colombia, Brazil, or even the US. Level of paying customers is increasing by the day, but you need to reduce losses on transmission (investments) and renegotiate the current power-generator contracts (or expropriate) in order to reduce generation costs.
It is ridiculous that you a private enterprise (Falconbridge Bonao, e.j.) can negotiate directly with a power plant (by having an exemption from the regulatory body to be a "non-regulated user") and can BUY the energy cheaper than the government (CDEE) from the same power plant. Not only you are taking the energy that households and other regulated users including businesses need, you are getting energy much cheaper than the very government state owned electric corporation.