{"id":27564,"date":"2016-03-21T08:53:41","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T11:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=27564"},"modified":"2016-03-21T08:56:46","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T11:56:46","slug":"electricity-meters-cause-controversy-in-rios-favelas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=27564","title":{"rendered":"Electricity Meters Cause Controversy in Rio\u2019s Favelas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

For the original article by Bruno Carvalho in Portuguese published in CartaCapital\u00a0<\/em>click<\/em> here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

A significant rise in\u00a0electricity costs\u00a0cause panic and contribute to the flight of residents from communities in the South Zone of the city.<\/em><\/h3>\n

Resident of the Santa Marta<\/a> favela in Rio’s\u00a0South Zone<\/a>\u00a0for more than 30 years, Maria Helena Barbosa da Silva doubts she will be able to maintain her home on the Beco de Argeu, where she raised her four children\u00a0who today are between 9 and 25 years old. The main reason\u00a0for her concern\u00a0is the rise in her electricity bill<\/a> which absorbs\u00a0much of her income. A beneficiary of Bolsa Fam\u00edlia<\/a>\u00a0(federal subsidy for those in need), she has a small refrigerator, TV, and computer in her three room home. Even so, her last bill came to R$440.20 (US$121). \u201cI even disconnected the electric shower to see if it would lower the bill. It didn\u2019t. I even only use the iron every now and again,\u201d she told\u00a0CartaCapital<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For over six years, complaints like that of Maria Helena accumulate in every corner of Santa\u00a0Marta and in various regions of Rio and the Baixada Fluminense<\/a> in Greater Rio<\/a>. The sudden or\u00a0progressive increases in electricity bills<\/a>\u2013residents of Vidigal<\/a>\u00a0close to the affluent\u00a0neighborhood of Leblon<\/a>, for example, had increases of up to 938% on bills\u00a0from one month to the next\u2013were quickly\u00a0linked to the substitution of traditional meters with electronic meters by Light<\/a>, the utility\u00a0responsible for supplying electricity in the city of Rio and in 31 municipalities across\u00a0Rio de Janeiro state.<\/p>\n

The installation of electronic meters has been carried out by Light since 2008 to, among other things, reduce the company’s losses from energy theft\u2013\u00a0so-called “gatos<\/a><\/em>” (unofficial\u00a0wire hook-ups). The network is protected by a shield box, hindering illegal connections on poles, while residents are provided with a digital display for monitoring consumption in order to prevent the tampering of the meters\u2019 pointers. Several residents interviewed for this report, however, told\u00a0that\u00a0they never received the display to be able to assess their individual consumption rate.<\/p>\n

According to Light’s\u00a0latest sustainability report, in 2014 there were close to 150,000 meters installed in regions considered \u201chigh risk of energy theft\u201d by the company and another 40,357 in favelas with Pacifying Police Units (UPPs)<\/a>\u2013among those Santa Marta.<\/p>\n

Light first came to the Santa\u00a0Marta hill in 1979 when Rio’s\u00a0favelas began having access to electricity. At the time, the number of houses in Santa Marta registered with Light was 73. Today, there are 2,124 consumers registered and that increase was largely due to the installation of the state’s first UPP<\/a> in the community in 2008. The following year, Light began to reform the electricity network and between 2010 and 2011 the new system came into full effect.<\/p>\n

From then on, the first complaints from residents regarding problems with bills came in and led to\u00a0action by the\u00a0State Prosecutor\u2019s Office against Light. Thiago Firmino<\/a>, a tour guide and community leader, actively participated in a series of protests<\/a>\u00a0by residents against the concessionary and recorded video testimonials<\/a>. In 2014,\u00a0close to 300 people came out in heavy rain to protest on the main streets of Botafogo in the biggest demonstration of this kind.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey (Light) came here saying they were going to improve people’s\u00a0quality of life, that we would have proof of residence, that the power wouldn’t cut\u00a0out any more. This little story that seems a dream began to turn into a nightmare,\u201d said Firmino. He gave as an example the\u00a0story of Francisco Vieira da Silva<\/a>, the 82 year-old owner of a small bar that also served as his home and was equipped with a freezer, refrigerator, fan\u00a0and TV. In two months, his bill jumped from R$380 (US$105) to R$1,252 (US$345). The situation became unsustainable and he was forced to leave the South Zone favela to live in Nova Igua\u00e7u<\/a>, in the Baixada Fluminense (2 hours by public transport).<\/p>\n

\"Foto:<\/a><\/p>\n

Social scientist Pricila Loretti is completing a doctorate at Rio de Janeiro’s\u00a0State University (UERJ)\u00a0on the process of electricity regularization in favelas after the installation of the UPP. She sees the regularization of electricity in these areas as positive but believes there\u2019s a dark side in that it can contribute to the process of\u00a0gentrification<\/a> in communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The processes of regularizing services make favela residents’ lives more expensive. Without public policies that are appropriate to people’s\u00a0reality, they end up being pushed to the social margins, contributing once again to reinforce the stigma<\/a> of the favela as a place of crime and informality. In this context, the clandestine\u00a0connections, despite their illegality, seem\u00a0like an economic solution to many and are viewed as a form of income distribution,\u201d affirms Pricila, who points out\u00a0that energy theft doesn’t only occur in favelas and low-income neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Another point Pricila highlights is that the coincidence between the billing increases and the adoption of new technology elevated residents’ distrust and incited\u00a0the conflict that began\u00a0with the changes in the Social Rate\u00a0for Electricity (Tarifa Social de Energia El\u00e9trica). With the revision, people who previously qualified for the\u00a0federal benefit lost the ability to receive discounts on their electricity bills. \u201cWith the implementation of this new technology, consumers lost access to the measurements of their meters, as not all customers received the display to verify their individual consumption and many didn\u2019t know how to use the meter,\u201d she pointed out.<\/p>\n

Sought out for comment, Light said in a statement that the exchange of the analog meter for the digital one doesn\u2019t impact the value of energy bills. \u201cIt is just a technological advancement. All electronic meters installed by Light are approved by the National Electricity Agency (Aneel) and the National Institute of Meterology, Quality and Technology (Inmetro),\u201d contested the utility.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company also affirmed that the cases of residents with very high electricity\u00a0bills are being individually analyzed and that for this, it is important that consumers contact the company to be sent teams to check the situation of each client.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas For the original article by Bruno Carvalho in Portuguese published in CartaCapital\u00a0click here. A significant rise in\u00a0electricity costs\u00a0cause panic and contribute to the flight of residents from communities in the South […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":27565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1267,335,1330,336],"tags":[1594,460,65,485,122,15,18,66,156,453,363],"writer":[1977],"translator":[1916],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gentrificationwatch","8":"category-policies","9":"category-translation","10":"category-violations","11":"tag-gato","12":"tag-baixada-fluminense","13":"tag-gentrification","14":"tag-light-electricity","15":"tag-nova-iguacu","16":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","17":"tag-protest","18":"tag-santa-marta","19":"tag-south-zone","20":"tag-stigma","21":"tag-vidigal","22":"writer-bruno-carvalho","23":"translator-tamara-katoni"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27564"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=27564"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=27564"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=27564"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=27564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}