Poor Villagers Forced to Pay Double for Power

People living in squatter camps and poor villages not serviced by Electricite du Cambodge are buying power from wholesalers at double and triple the price charged by the power company, electricity officials and villagers said last week.

The cost of connecting those areas to the city’s main power grid is prohibitively high, said Chheung Ung, director of the wholesale section at EdC. “We cannot connect the power linking to the squatters. Only wholesalers can do it,” Chheung Ung said.

EdC—the state-run electricity supplier that oversees the power grid in Phnom Penh and Takh­mau district in Kandal province—sells power to about 200 wholesale companies. These companies then resell it to squatter settlements in and around Phnom Penh, Chheung Ung said.

EdC charges wholesalers

350 to 650 riel per kilowatt-hour, Chheung Ung said. But in the villages, power from the wholesale companies typically retails for about 1,500 riel per kilowatt-hour, village officials said.

“It is quite expensive,” said Sam Nop, village chief of the Borei Keila squatter community.

Wholesale power prevails in Kandal’s Kien Svay district, Dang­kao and Russei Keo districts in Phnom Penh, and some central parts of the city.

At Sen Sok village, 30 km north of Phnom Penh, where some 1,250 squatter families from Tonle Bassac commune were relocated in 2001, most families are having difficulty paying for electricity, said village chief Ly Vendredy. Most of the residents work as taxi drivers or construction workers, he said.

“People here are very poor and electricity is so expensive,” Ly Vendredy said, adding that the villagers had approached EdC several times about getting cheaper electricity, with no response.

EdC plans to connect power to poor areas over the next few years, Chheung Ung said, and reduce the number of wholesale companies.

“We want the cheaper price, but we cannot get it.”

Related Stories

Latest News