Leopoldo Espaillat, a former president of the National Petroleum Refinery, says that Dominicans are in their legal right to reject the installation of the new Edesur and Edenorte meters that have not been certified. Where the new meters have been installed, power bills have gone up considerably, as per newspaper reports. Espaillat says in an article in El Siglo and Hoy newspapers that the new meters have increased billing wherever they have been installed, even in Spain, where they have originated multi million lawsuits. He says that Law 602 on Normalization and Quality Systems gives Digenor the responsibility of calibrating and certifying the meters. News reports say that the company has rejected requests that these be certified in the only laboratory existent in the country, that owned by AES. Espaillat urges Digenor, a government quality control division, to get involved and take a leading role to protect consumers from the abuses of the company that he says is subject to lawsuits by Dominicans, also.
