Santo Domingo.- The Consumer Rights Foundation (FUNDECOM) revealed Tuesday that the electricity distributors owe customers RD$95.6 billion for the hours of unjustified blackouts from January 1, 2003, to January 31, 2012.

It said the debt, from a study on energy not supplied, doesn’t figure take in the bookkeeping of the three electricity distributors and is neither cited by the sector’s authorities nor the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank.

In a statement, Fundecom said those entities’ only interest is the ballooned debts shown by the power companies, sheltered to a large extent under illegal and unconstitutional contracts.

It said if the Electricity Superintendence (SIE) would’ve forced the first distributor to sustain a blackout to reimburse 150% of the cost to customers, as the General Electricity Law stipulates, the country’s blackouts problems would’ve been solved. “And we wouldn’t have the heavy burden of the electrical subsidy, which is basically allocated to cover the electrical distributors’ inefficiency.”

Fundecom, which based its figures on a study by Santo Domingo State University’s (UASD) Energy Institute, called on the presidential candidates to include the Law’s strict compliance in their programs, to buy electrical based on public tenders, set prices based on cost analysis and preferred low cost power plants when negotiating new energy contracts.