Haiti

Lack of Electricity Hurts Education, Entrepreneurship in Haiti

Government workers cite poverty and politics among the barriers to improve electricity distribution.

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Lack of Electricity Hurts Education, Entrepreneurship in Haiti

Publication Date

JÉRÉMIE, HAITI – Sandra Belfort, 19, says her family sometimes steals electricity from their neighbors in Jérémie, a coastal town in southwestern Haiti, because they cannot afford to pay for their own meter.

“In my house, we bootleg electricity from somebody else’s line because the electric company could not install a meter for us,” says Belfort, who lives with her mother and two brothers. “We were forced to take electricity from somebody else because my brothers need to study.”

But now she and her family have no electricity because they feared drawing penalties from the electric company for obtaining it illegally.

“We disconnected it again,” she says, “because we heard that they would penalize us if we continued to do so.”

In addition to hurting her brothers’ studies, the lack of access to electricity can even be dangerous, Belfort says. In the absence of electricity, residents rely on candles, which caused a fire in a home in her neighborhood in November 2012.

The family went to sleep and forgot about the candle they had lit, and the table the candle was on caught fire, which spread to the whole house, Belfort says. The adult and child living in the house suffered burns but survived.

A lack of electricity hurts education and entrepreneurship in Jérémie. The director of the state-run power company attributes the lack to insufficient equipment and customers’ inability to pay their electricity bills. As government employees attribute weak electricity access and distribution to politics, a new loan from the World Bank supports the long-term development of the sector.  

The electricity, gas and water subsector was among the three sectors worst affected by the January 2010 earthquake, according to a 2010 World Bank report. In addition to the $60 million needed to operate the state-owned power company, Electricité d’Haïti, immediately following the earthquake, the report predicted that an additional $10 million would be needed in the medium term, from October 2011 to March 2013.

Requirements to reconstruct the sector outweighed losses from the earthquake because the electricity sector was already in bad shape, mainly because of a large deficit by Electricité d’Haïti, according to the World Bank report.

From one day to another, residents of Jérémie, the capital of the Grand’Anse department, do not know whether they will have electricity. Occasionally, there will be electricity for up to four to six hours during the day if there is a special event, such as the feast of St. Louis, the patron saint of Jérémie.

Residents say the town’s electricity problems hurt education and entrepreneurship.

Electricity plays a crucial role in education and employment, says Richard Vilaire, 26, a taxi driver wearing a white T-shirt and blue pants.

“Students of all ages complain about the blackouts in Jérémie because these blackouts prevent them from studying,” he says.

He cites large demonstrations in Jérémie in November 2012.

“One of the principle demands was the demand for regular electricity,” Vilaire says.

Vilaire says that the lack of electricity also affects his business.

“Electricity is of great importance in order for a city to function, and for us not to have it regularly is a problem,” he says. “As a taxi driver, I could make more money if we had electricity. But without it, everybody goes home early, and there is no activity in the streets.”

The lack of electricity also has a negative impact on small vendors, especially those who sell refrigerated items. 

“I used to sell cold drinks,” Joselene Bien-Aime, 18, says. “But because of the problem with electricity, I can no longer sell those.”

Kalebe Verdieu, 44, director of Electricité d’Haïti in Jérémie, says he cannot overstate the importance of electricity.

“To show you how important electricity is in the life of a country, let me define electricity for you this way: Electricity is life,” he says while sitting in his office wearing black pants and a multicolored, long-sleeved shirt.

Verdieu, who has worked for the town's lone electric company for more than four years, explains how it generates and distributes electricity.

“The enterprise consists of three entities: production, transport and commercialization,” he says. “In order to be operational, EdH in Jeremie has a powerful Cummins generator of 1,500 kilowatts, which burns 80 gallons of gas per hour, which comes to 1,920 gallons of gas for 24 hours.”

It distributes this power among Jérémie’s neighborhoods.

“We have three circuits for electricity: Basse-Ville, Bordes-Rochasse, Caracolie,” he says. “They provide electricity every evening from 6 p.m. to midnight.”

But generator problems mean the company cannot power all three circuits at once.

“Some problems have developed,” he says. “One of the circuits can only provide two hours of electricity, and the two others can work for six hours. The generator is not powerful enough to push all three circuits at the same time.”

Verdieu says that he sat down with the electric company’s main office in Port-au-Prince in May 2012 to negotiate for an additional generator for Jérémie.

Jérémie received two additional generators in December 2012, but they were secondhand.

“A brand new generator would really serve the population of Jeremie well,” Belfort says.

Verdieu says that the company has almost resolved the problem of providing electricity by zone. But he emphasizes that this has been part of a long-term process initiated by the company, not the result of demonstrations last year.

Verdieu also says that the company’s equipment and resources are not the only barriers. Many customers do not pay their bills, which hurts the company’s income and, therefore, its ability to improve service.

The company provides about 55 percent of the town of Jérémie with electricity. But of the 3,124 active customers as of October 2012, only 494 paid their electric bills, which means there are 2,630 customers who did not pay.

Renesse Paul, 28, who lives with her husband and four children in Jérémie, is an Electricité d’Haïti customer. Wearing a black skirt and a blue T-shirt, she says her household has a company meter and uses electricity only to power their TV.

She pays their electric bill only every three months. Because there are many days when there is no electricity, the family relies on candles. During a 12-day period, her family uses 36 candles, three each evening.

Verdieu urges all the company’s customers to pay their electric bills on time. For those who steal electricity from others, he says, that is a matter for the police. The police have made nine arrests since August 2012.

But Verdieu says the problem boils down to politics, especially when it comes to access to electricity in the rural areas surrounding the town. The government needs to implement measures to distribute electricity in the countryside because it will be costly.

“The fact that people outside of Jérémie do not have electricity is a political problem,” Verdieu says.

Wilbert Auguste, director of the Grand’Anse division of the Ministère des Travaux Publics, Transports et Communications, the ministry that governs the electricity sector, referred all questions to Verdieu regarding electricity in Jérémie. The lack of electricity in the countryside is a question that concerns the senators and representatives, he says.

Grand’Anse senators and representatives could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the long-term phase to restructure the electricity sector has begun. In September 2012, the World Bank approved a $90-million loan to Haiti to rebuild its energy infrastructure and improve citizens’ access to electricity. The goals of the project, which runs until 2017, include enhancing Electricité d’Haïti’s performance and rehabilitating and expanding infrastructure.

Belfort asks the government to take pity on the Grand’Anse because its citizens have been suffering for a long time without regular electricity.

 

Interviews were translated from French and Haitian Creole.