Light or life

The Catamarca energy company reported this week that an average of 25 clandestine connections per day are registered in the province, the vast majority of them in the Central Valley. He did so in the context of a power outage that affected the town of Antapoca, in the Valle Viejo department, precisely as a consequence of this type of connections, which constitute a crime, but also a permanent risk to the lives of those who use them. performed in ways characterized by precariousness and an additional inconvenience for the electrical system.

The official information was provided by the head of Institutional Relations of EC SAPEM in dialogue with Radio Ancasti, who also spoke about the collateral damage. “Energy theft is a permanent issue, it is not new that there are clandestine connections, the problem that affects us as a company is historical. It is energy that we buy in Buenos Aires, that is stolen from us here and has collateral damage that the rest of the users suffer,” he stated.

The Antapoca outage was caused precisely by the voltage variations produced by clandestine connections, which affected, for example, a water pump at School No. 30 in that town.

The risks of operating public wiring illegally are undeniable. But there are risks that the problem, instead of diminishing, will tend to worsen in the immediate future. It is that the increase in electricity rates that have been recorded and that will be accentuated in the coming months due to the removal of subsidies, particularly to the lower-middle and low-income sectors.

Many families that are affected by the sharp deterioration in salaries, which has been going on for a long time but has notably deepened in the last semester, will not be able to afford the cost of energy. There is also an increase in unemployment due to the recession that is overwhelming the national economy. That is a reality as indisputable as the danger of manipulating cables in a precarious way.

So these vulnerable groups find themselves at a crossroads: either they are left without electricity, or they risk their lives by making clandestine connections and causing damage to the provincial electrical system, affecting other users. The company is right in its arguments, but these are very difficult to assimilate for those who cannot, at this point in civilization, live without electricity.

That is the reason why most nations in the world subsidize the energy consumption of lower-income sectors. Argentina, however, since the inauguration of the libertarian government, has launched a process of withdrawing these subsidies, causing the aforementioned drama. Withdrawing subsidies while wages fall and unemployment increases is a serious problem that must be resolved immediately.