2004News

Mejia says blackouts are a threat

As the prolonged series of power outages continued to punish the general population, President Hipolito Mejia said that the appointments of high-ranking military figures to the commission that will “talk” to the power generators is due to the fact that the outages are a threat to the Dominican state. According to El Caribe, Cesar Sanchez, the head of the CDEEE, Finance Minister Rafael Calderon and generals Jose Manuel Soto Jimenez and Pedro de Jesus Candelier have been charged with resolving the conflicts that exist between the government and the AES-Andres and EGE-Haina generating facilities. The electricity producers claim that the government owes them US$70 million. The President said that the generating facilities are seeking to make greater profits that at any other time since the privatization process began. Mejia called the situation “a problem for State security; because if I pay, I am making an extraordinary sacrifice and the plants remain off, and this becomes a State problem.”