7 News Belize

Phase 4 Residents Suffering in the Darkness
posted (April 17, 2009)

The majority of the 90 families that live in the Belama Phase 4 area are without power tonight. But that’s not because of a blackout – it is because two weeks ago Belize Electricity Limited began cutting the supply of electricity to customers who were illegal selling electricity to other residents. It is a major step backwards for the community of mainly squatters who already have poor streets, no running water, and now – no electricity. Keith Swift found out more.

Keith Swift Reporting,
For the last two weeks, 14 year Christian Rivas, a high school student, has been using the light from the window to do his homework. And that is because – two weeks ago – BEL cut his family’s source of electricity.

Sonia Rivas, Belama Phase 4 resident
“We need the current for our children. They need the fan to sleep because there are a lot of mosquitoes back here and sometimes we leave the window open but it is too dangerous back here.”

Yanira Perez’s story is similar. BEL cut her power supply a week ago and since then – she and her 9 month old daughter’s only source of light at night is a candle.

Yanira Perez, Belama Phase 4 resident
“We can’t sleep because too much heat and my baby nine months old can’t sleep neither because she is small and she doesn’t know what is happening. To go look for another place outside, the rent is too expensive like how my boyfriend doesn’t have a good job.”

Keith Swift,
So you have a nine month old baby and how do you manage at night?

Yanira Perez,
“I have to use cloth or something for her to sleep because she likes to cry. It is very hot and a lot of mosquitoes and I have to wrap her good and she feels hot and all of that.”

And those mosquitoes have had no mercy on Mercy Jimenez’s feet.

Mercy Jimenez, Belama Phase 4 Resident
“You see the mosquitoes bite us because we don’t have lights and it affects us. I don’t know why BEL doesn’t talk to you for this thing.”

Keith Swift,
How bad are the mosquitoes?

Mercy Jimenez,
“Yes all the time the mosquitoes bite me I swell and it itches too much. That has my foot so because I can’t have fan at night.”

BEL’s problems are with wires like this one. It looks like a clothesline but it is actually an electrical wire. There is an entire network of these wires here in Belama Phase 4 because there are no lampposts and so there is no other way for residents to receive electricity. But that power is gone now because BEL confiscated meters from those residents who were sub-selling electricity- leaving those who were buying – in the dark.

Mercy Jimenez,
“Me have to pay because me need the light.”

Keith Swift,
How much did you pay?

Mercy Jimenez,
“Not too much money, only $20 a month.”

Yanira Perez,
“Tell them not to cut the current because we are persons just like them. We need light just like them.”

Noel Reyes, Belama Phase 4 Resident
“Let BEL try to help us because they have forgotten us and we would pay for them and we would pay for them to put in the current. We are asking them to come back and put on the light because this time it is hard because we don’t have work and we don’t have money but we will try and see how we could pay it because we have children that need the current because they cannot sleep."

And until there is a permanent solution – residents have found a temporary one – running their electrical wires underground in PVC pipes.

In a press release issued yesterday, BEL said it had moved to stop illegal connections and redistribution of power. The release notes that redistributing power from one premise to another can result in overloads and that could cause a fire. Of course, so can candles. Government has been mum but Area Representative Francis Fonseca today called on government to immediately intervene. Fonseca says that in January of 2008 he began talks with BEL and Belize Water Services on installing infrastructure for water and electricity but since taking office the UDP government hasn’t done anything.

7NEWS produced for broadcast by News Director Jules Vasquez
Edited and Prepared for the internet by Keith Swift

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