President Leonel Fernández ordered Alejandrina Germán, Secretary of the Presidency, to preside over a committee that will coordinate the national energy system and keep the public opinion up to date on what’s going on with privatization. The committee was formed yesterday during the three hour meeting attended by government officials and representatives of the companies that won bid to manage the distribution and generation facilities of the Dominican Electricity Corporation (CDE. This follow up unit, Unidad de Seguimiento, is made up by Temístocles Montás; the administrator of the CDE, Radhamés Segura; the Superintendent of Electricity, Marcos Cochón; a representative of the Commission for the Reform of Public Enterprise (CREP) and the deputy administrator of CDE, who is in charge of the Unidad de Despacho, the electricity dispatch unit. The CDE is still a middle point between private companies that generate electricity and the new private distributors. Consumers have been irritated by the lack of information coming forth from the new companies. As of late, the nation has again been suffering long blackouts as well as new hikes in electricity bills. The government attributed the blackouts to deficiencies in generation and to repairs being carried on on distribution lines by the new companies.
