Dominica sole electricity company, DOMLEC, is reporting more setbacks following the passage of Tropical Storm Erika with the loss of one of its generating units on Wednesday in Portsmouth.
This follows the loss of another unit on September 18.
“Our hydro system has been severely affected by Tropical Storm Erika,” Senior Customer Service Representative of DOMLEC, Edison St Jean, said on Thursday. “This is a follow up of where we are since the storm. On September 18th we lost unit number three and yesterday, at 12:27 we lost unit seven, both located in Portsmouth.”
Presently the company is operating on three hydro units with electricity supplies plunging from 6.6 megawatts to 400 kilowatts.
“What we have done is that we have communicated with some of our very large top customers who own self generators to come off the grid,” St Jean stated. “This means to self generate so that we will be able to maintain an uninterrupted power supply to our customers.”
He also mentioned that there has been severe damage by landslides to the intake at Clarke River.
“Water is no longer getting to the system and this is as a result of landslides,” St Jean explained. “The pipeline is also damaged and in other areas the support for the pipeline were completely washed away by the storm.”
In earlier reports the company reported over $5.9-million in damages in the wake of the storm.
The Gov’t should look into forming a partnership with social security to put in some money to make up 51% of the company with hopes of a take over of Domlec. After all, it’s a profit making entity. Then regulate Domlec’s runaway bottomless profits. That will be more incentive to invest in the future in hydro and other renewables.
look out another article coming soon . customers light bills have been raised due to damage caused by erika. domlec has enough money from all their profits over the years.
If you cannot for fill this basic obligation, what good are you? Did you think Dominica was an easy fat tit to suck? You are a parasite.
Give Domlec back to the Dominicans and walk away or dig deep and put in new, cleaner, efficient generators, cleaner taller chimneys and bury the high tension wires(to reduce the risk of cancer).
You have been sold a lemon, did you think the nice American man was doing you a favour. Ha ha ha the joke is on you. They sucked us dry for as long as they could, with the help of the I.M.F and then ran away before they had to spend any real money.
What this have to do with customers the same customers that DOMLEC makes millions of profit from every year; DOMLEC dont want to use its profits to maintain its system but rather want ths customers to pay for d damange by mounting up thier ekectrical bill.
Ooops loss not lost lol
So what are you doing to fix it .. We know systems were damaged heck everyone’s been through it. Let’s start talking about solutions its been over a month . it feels like y’all making excuses