The government, through the State Secretary for Electricity, is introducing a pre-payment scheme to the districts, beginning in Baucau.
“We have begun installing everywhere. In the beginning of December 2013 I went there to launch pre-payment via SMS,” the State Secretary for Electricity (SEE), Januario Pereira said at the National Parliament.
He said the pre-payment scheme will cover all the districts.
Member of Parliament MP Felis berto Monteiro said he appreciated the system as it could quickly facilitate the communities’ access to electricity.
“But in our point of view, it’s still not right to install the pre-payment scheme within Dili,” he said.
He said just in Dili around 50 per cent of people use electricity illegally as the monitoring system isn’t adequate.
Therefore he called on SEE to fix the mechanism for usage monitoring.
He said the population in the districts should have to pay for electricity as they have money as well.
“To my observation our people eat three times a day, it means that they do have responsibility to pay for electricity,” the MP said.
Nevertheless, he said he was concerned about ongoing power blackouts in the districts.
MP Domingos Carvalho de Araujo said the communities should pay, so the state can be reimbursed for some of its expense on electricity.
“We give such support to the state, so we can keep providing us the energy,” said MP de Araujo.
He said the communities in the rural areas can pay but there should be a concession for those who use electricity sparingly.
“We see it’s very hard for them to get money for paying for electricity; it’s a bit difficult,” he said.
De Araujo said he had observed that in Foho Lau Village, Aileu district, pre-payment has been installed in people’s houses but they were still unable to access electricity.
“We see it’s difficult to come here to buy the credit, as EDTL is far away,” he said.
He said it can take up to two hours to travel by vehicle to purchase electricity credit.
