There are 1,143 children not taking classes at the Professor Simon Orozco Poly-technical School in the Invivienda section of Santo Domingo. The cause? No lights at all. While Ede-Este, the electricity supplier for the area has said that they are willing to place the school on the list that benefits from un-interrupted service, they must first pay what is owed and clarify just who is supposed to pay the bills. The director of the school, Eduardo Reyes, told Listin Diario reporters that Margarita Mur, an official from Ede-Este, told him that the order to cut power to the school came about because the Dominican government owes RD$18 million in back electricity invoices for schools in the eastern part of the DR. All this in spite of the fact that the Ministry of Education had promised to pay the debt of nearly RD$2 million.
The lack of electricity keeps the school from functioning because there is no way to run the laboratories of electricity, electronics, computers, textile design and manufacturing and refrigeration.
Professor Reyes had sent a letter to Vice Minister Fausto Mota so that the government ministry pay the bill, since the government subsidy that the school receives “is not enough to pay for electricity.”
According to Reyes, he received a favorable response to his letter to the Ministry of Education. According to Mur, Ede-Este is owed RD$1,960,613.57 in overdue electric bills and it is not possible to transfer the school to the no-cut list until the bills are paid.
The Ede-Este contract is in the name of the Archdioceses of Santo Domingo, the school’s patron.