By: Gary Robles – 1/25
1. Hola a todos, my name is Jorge Gabriel Arroyo. I am known in the social media world as Gaby Robles. I was born in Aibonito, Puerto Rico, and spent most of my life in Cayey, Puerto Rico. To those unfamiliar with Puerto Rico, Cayey is one hour away from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It’s a beautiful town located in the beautiful mountains, and it’s also called one of the great areas of la Ruta del Lechon, in English the roasted pork route.
If you ever have a chance to visit and love roasted pork, I will recommend you pay a visit to that area and have delicious food, you will thank me later for that recommendation.
Now a little bit more about me I currently live in New Hampshire and I’m 39 years old currently majoring an associate in digital photography at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU).
As we all know, this week on New Year’s Eve, Puerto Rico suffered another blackout, or as we call it in Puerto Rico “UN Apagon.”
Currently, the one administrating the power grid in Puerto Rico is Luma Energy. Luma is a private Canadian American company that operates and manages the electric power on the island.
After the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017. The government of Puerto Rico hired Luma due to the conditions not only of the power grid but also for the almost being bankrupt by the electrical company of Puerto Rico – Puerto Rico power company or Autoridad De Energia Electrica which was the only power company in Puerto Rico and in 2017 it faced bankruptcy as the state government faced billions of dollars in debt.
In June of 2020 the government of Puerto Rico signed an agreement between PREPPA and Luma Energy LLC. The contract created between the government and Luma Energy has some clauses that are very favorable for the corporation and very onerous and unfavorable for the people of Puerto Rico. As we have seen lately on the news.
2. According to www.esjuto.org in just 2022 Luma Energy received 69.5 million dollars in incentives from all together FEMA and the Federal government. As many of the locals know we all are asking ourselves where that money has gone or what has been done because we still have blackouts, or some areas get their power gone. I have family and friends in Puerto Rico and it is something normal for them, but they are frustrated at not being able to sleep with electricity even at night where some people don’t have the benefit or the budget to install generators or even solar technology.
For the people of Puerto Rico, the average and minimum of $10.50 an hour now back years ago was the federal minimum of $7.50 an hour. The average salary on the island yearly is from 15,000 dollars to 20,000 dollars. In 2024 Luma asked the board that controls the prices of the electrical rate for another raise of 9.5% per kilowatt, bringing the price for the average 800kw a month per user for the hour to 23.779 for residential due to the fuel prices around the world and the island. And to add to that the island has an 11.5% sales tax on everything including the supermarket food on the island, and the Johnsons Act has hurt Puerto Ricans in their pockets.
In 2023 Luma Energy received a whopping from the federal government and subsidies and money to fix the electrical grid for 493 million dollars and again the question that we have asked is what they are doing with that money, that should be enough to renew the whole grid system. The grid system on the island was built between the 1960s to 1970s and has been the same since then, since the monopoly of the PREPRA no maintenance or renovations have been done to the system since then. In my opinion, as ever, nationals from the islands know that we had the most corrupt government from the main parties in Puerto Rico, and that will be another Report that I will write at another time.
Now, locals have called and done strikes against Luma to cancel the contract, the actual elected governor Jenniffer Gonzales when she was a candidate was against the cancellation of the contract, as she started it to lose on her polls, and she then changed her opinion winning the main candidate for governor over Pedro Pierluisi. In Puerto Rico, we inaugurate a new government every 4 years and the new government will be inaugurated on January second. One of the messages from the newly elected government has been that they are going to cancel the Luma contract even if it costs the citizens of Puerto Rico a hefty fine.
Resources:
https://esjusto.org/ ◊