February 2023

In the houses of the Docta complex, “days of despair” were experienced during this summer due to the heat. This is how a group of 120 homeowners of this urban project located in the southwestern part of the capital city describe it: they cannot use their refrigeration equipment because they have been waiting more than four years to connect to the electricity grid.

The scene is repeated in each house: “Look: I turn on the air conditioning equipment and the refrigerator stops working,” shows one of the members of the group of neighbors. He is one of the inhabitants of the buildings that correspond to the stages called “3, 4 and 5” of the aforementioned housing complex.

“Stages 3, 4 and 5 bring together 120 families in total. They have been waiting for four years to connect their houses. Neither the regulatory entities nor the Consumer Defense find irregularities, because Grupo Proaco (development developer) buys and pays for electricity from Epec and the neighbors receive that service”, they detailed.

However, electrical appliances do not work or do so only partially, when energy demand grows, as is usual in summer.

The owners have been demanding a solution for a long time. But they assure that “the certificates of possession do not serve to prosper the 50 complaints in Defense of the Consumer”. In the aforementioned minutes, it is announced that Proaco will offer electrical service, although without detailing its quality.

In Proaco they ensure that the guidelines in the contracts are complied with

For their part, spokespersons for the firm considered that “everything is fulfilled according to the agreed contracts.” When asked by this medium regarding whether the contract stipulates that the owners receive “work light”, they highlighted that “stage 1 and 2 of Docta (Córdoba and Malagueño) went through this same process and already have 100 percent of the services connected to the different provider companies”.

In turn, they informed that the next stage to be connected to the definitive energy source is stage 3. According to Proaco’s estimates, the term for this milestone will not be more than 120 days. Regarding the gas work, they calculated that the connections will take place in the next 60 days.

“All the contracts provide for the provision of provisional electricity for the work until Epec takes over the operation of the service. Failing that, it is also ratified in the possession certificate contract that they signed with the delivery of the property”, they stressed from the group.

They clarified that the term for the connection of stages 4 and 5 is the same as for stage 3. “It is important to understand that the ‘construction’ service suffers in the summer due to the great demand that occurs during the heat we had . It is to some extent what happens throughout the city, especially also due to the demand for energy from tourism”, they expressed from Proaco.

And regarding the strictness of compliance with the times stipulated by the firm itself, they added: “It is what is scheduled, but you have to be prudent, understanding that it does not depend on Proaco.”

The reasons why homeowners still can’t connect to the power grid

Asked regarding the delays presented by the availability of the definitive connection source, from Proaco they argued that they are going through “an administrative process that means adding around 300 new clients to the line.”

However, from the Provincial Electric Power Company (Epec) they explained that the operation of the service depends on a work that must be carried out by the developer. “Here there are 300 lots that need to be given electricity. A study was made and a work was requested. It was a transformer station to offer electrical energy. That work has not yet been completed,” they said from Epec.

And they added: “They have work light and that authorizes them to receive a reduced number of kilowatts. Once the work on the transformer station is completed, we will be able to offer the connection”.

Meanwhile, those affected ask for an immediate solution: “It can’t be that nobody takes charge. Proaco fails to meet the promised times and the Consumer Defense does not help us, due to a technicality. Meanwhile, we don’t have electricity in our homes”, questioned another member of the group.

“On the Proaco website they publish that the Docta transformer station was going to be built within 14 months. The publication dates from 2015″, another owner showed, referring to a post announcing the signing of a “historic agreement” with Epec.

“We want to pay for the light we consume. We cannot continue living in this way, without having such an elementary service. We chose this place to live and nobody warned us that we were going to suffer from this problem for years”, another neighbor of the place complained.

In four months it will be known if it reaches the long-awaited end.