Residents of villages that have been without electricity for 10 days following Storm Kristin, are mobilising for a demonstration tonight in Pombal to demand urgent solutions for the population, which, they say, is “desperate”.
“We have been without electricity for 10 days, with very limited communications, there are still villages without water. The population is beginning to get desperate. We see no solutions in sight, we see no one working on the ground,” Tatiana Ferreira, one of the promoters of the initiative, tells Lusa.
The demonstration,intended to be silent and peaceful, is scheduled for 8pm, next to Pombal Town Hall, where the parish council presidents meet every day in the late afternoon.
Under the slogan “Villages without power for 10 days”, organisers are urging the population to mobilise so that “E-Redes respects those who pay them”.
Tatiana Ferreira, the technical director of a nursing home, also said the aim is to show solidarity with presidents of the parish councils in the municipality, urging them to join the initiative.
“Everyone is knocking on their door, but they are not the ones who have the solutions in their hands. E-Redes is the one with the solutions,” she said.
Tatiana lives in Paço, a village that still has no electricity or internet and only “window communications”, but she has to travel to the Almagreira Parish Council headquarters to access electricity and work.
“Perhaps the priority was the parish headquarters because of the elections, but we in the villages also need electricity,” she points out, recalling that in 2018, after the passage of Storm Leslie, she had “electricity in three days” and asks: “Why has it now been 10 days and there are still villages without working generators to provide us with electricity?”
Tatiana Ferreira stressed that people are tired of being at home in the dark. “It’s desperate,” she said, noting that her colleagues had to shower at the home where they work and that they also eat there because they cannot cook in their homes.
The feeling, she described, is “one of physical fatigue and exhaustion due to the lack of answers.”
“And we are even more overwhelmed when we hear news that, in principle, we may be without electricity until the 14th (…) There are still many days to go until the 14th. For us, it’s frightening. How are we going to continue living without electricity at home?”
A total of 89,000 E-Redes customers were still without electricity at 3:30 pm yesterday.
Source: LUSA
