The mayor of Cartagena, Dumek Turbay, spoke with De. Within the framework of his interview, in which Juliana Solano Char, governor in charge of Bolívar, the president of the Cartageneros also referred to the energy crisis on the Colombian Caribbean coast. “Caribbean citizens pay their receipt. That little story that we do not pay, that is straw. That little story that everyone steals the energy, that is not true either. So, the people, the citizen what they want is to pay what it consumes,” he said initially.
“I pay what consumed, you do not have to hang me that they did not charge, that the theft of energy, that the tariff option, that the non -tariff, that is, saw us face of assholes, really. And they are charging us what we have not consumed. Then, no more injustice, no longer more out over,” added the mayor of Cartagena.
“Yesterday I met a candidate for president in Cartagena, in a street, a presidential candidate: Juan Manuel Galán. And I found it and said: ‘What do we do with energy? What can be the solution?’ I said: ‘It is simpler than you think, we have said it during the last 15 months. Turbay “The president said it in Barranquilla: ‘I will declare state debt the energy costs they are charging, something like that. How to nationalize the debt and has not done so. And he has not done so now”Added the mayor of the Cartagena.
The president said that the formula that has been applied to fix the energy rates was set for 30 years and was approved by the Commission for Energy and Gas Regulation (CREG), “an instance of commissioners and commissioners appointed by the President, but that come from private generators.” That formula, he said, “is a way that has been rigged to the great interests of those who live and knead enormous annual fortunes of the generation, transmission, distribution and marketing of electricity in Colombia.”
And it is so complex, he added, that it is for the people not to understand. “They make it difficult for the common people not to understand why Energy on the Caribbean coast, the land of the sun, It ends up being two or three times more expensive than in Bogotá or Cali, why Colombia being a country with so much water, with so much sun, pays the most expensive electric rates in America, ”he said.
According to the president, the Constitution establishes that energy must reflect the cost of production and normal gain, “but they are gaining an income that can be 10 and 15 times more than a normal gain in Colombia, because the formula of its mathematics guarantees it.”
He even said that in the last five years, each Colombian and each company, small or large, has paid up to ten times more than due, breaking the Constitution and the law. “They have cheated us, that is the word, the scam are billions of dollars every year, they are billion pesos that have stolen us,” he said.
The Head of State said that in Colombia there are only six generators and two transmission that are public, in addition to distributors and marketers. In that chain, he said, a kilowatt of electricity that should cost between $ 100 and $ 120, ends up, sometimes, more than $ 1,300: “Not even cocaine has that profitability in Colombia,” he said at that time.
And that is due, according to Petro, that “the CREG made the formula with the sole objective of cheating the user that would have a lower rate, to fill the pockets of the six large generators of electricity in Colombia.”
With that panorama, the president invited to defend a formula designed by the National Government since and that was approved last December 18, because he said that the other alternatives have not worked. He referred to the suspension of the presidential decree that sought to lower energy rates; to the alleged obstacles that the government has had to appoint commissioners in the CREG and the alleged lobby that companies in the sector have exercised.
The full interview with the mayor of Cartagena, Dumek Turbay, and Juliana Solano Char, governor in charge of Bolívar:
To this added President Petro that the commissioners of the company XM, operator of the energy market, are elected among themselves. “So, to whom they obey? Who do they belong to? Where is the public service? Where are the powers of control, regulation and surveillance that the Constitution gives to the President of the Republic?” He asked. “Who applies the formula of the CREG is XM. Then, it turns out that its Board of Directors is not chosen by the people, no one from Congress, no one from the Judiciary, no one from the Legislative Power, but is chosen among them,” he answered.
Therefore, the Head of State told the Superintendent of Public Services: “You are a delegate of the constitutional functions of the President of the Republic, you must use the presidential powers for XM to apply the formula issued by the CREG and not the old woman.”
