The director of the Institute of Electricity at the state-run Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo, engineer Jose Luis Moreno, told Hoy newspaper that the Electricity Law is being violated in more than 15 of its articles, especially in areas that protect consumers. He said the government has yet to apply Article 98 that stipulates that consumers are entitled to 90 minutes of free power service for each hour of blackout. He said the application of this provision should have started on 1 January 2003, but has never been implemented. He also mentioned Article 114 that establishes that increases in the power rate require technical studies and that new rates be published prior to their implementation. Moreno said the present continued increases in rates serve as incentive for consumers to evade paying for the service, instead of increasing revenues of the distributors of the service. The only serious study conducted on power rates was that carried out by PA Consulting, which recommended that rates be reduced, not increased.