I do not think Dominicans are asking for miracles anymore. Most people have accepted that maintaining an electrical grid on a small island is expensive, complicated, and filled with challenges that the average customer probably never sees. We understand that infrastructure costs money. We understand that repairs take time. DOMLEC, we understand that the country is in the middle of preparing for a future that includes geothermal energy and a more modern electricity network. What many people like me no longer understand, however, is why the interruptions seem to occur so frequently and why every explanation seems like a temporary answer to what feels like a permanent problem.
At some point, frustration stops being about a single outage and becomes about confidence. That is where many consumers seem to be today. When the power goes off once, people grumble and move on. When it happens again a few days later, they become irritated. When it happens repeatedly within the same week, or twice a day like yesterday, then frustration turns to anger. Dominicans begin to ask themselves whether the next flicker will damage a television, refrigerator, air-conditioning unit, computer, modem, or another appliance they worked hard to purchase.
Those concerns are not imaginary. Every Dominican family knows somebody who has lost equipment because of power fluctuations, outages, or surges. Every business owner has a story about interrupted operations, damaged inventory, lost sales, or customers walking away because systems were down.
These costs rarely appear in official statements, yet they are real costs paid by real people. They are paid by the restaurant owner trying to protect refrigerated stock, by the student trying to complete assignments online, by the family trying to preserve food in a freezer, and by the small entrepreneur whose entire business depends on reliable electricity.
To be fair, DOMLEC often explains what happened, and sometimes it is a fault on a line, other times it’s equipment failure. Sometimes the weather contributes to the problem, and then there are those emergency repairs that become necessary. The public hears these explanations, but increasingly, there is a feeling that the country is trapped in a cycle where the causes change but the result remains the same.
What people want to hear now is not simply what went wrong yesterday. They want to know what is being done to ensure the same thing does not happen next month.
DOMLEC, Dominicans are not electrical engineers. Most of us do not need a technical explanation involving transformers, circuits, feeders, or voltage regulation. We want a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. Is the network improving, and if so, how long will it take before customers begin noticing the difference in their daily lives?
If major infrastructure upgrades are required, then you need to tell us. If even more investment is needed, tell us and ask the government. If parts of the system are reaching the end of their useful life, which we all know they have, then you also need to tell us that too. People are far more willing to tolerate challenges when they understand where the country is heading.
What makes the situation even more frustrating is the compensation process when appliances are damaged. Ask a neighbour, cousin, or friend, and you will hear similar complaints. Customers are often required to provide dates, times, evidence, reports, estimates, and details that many ordinary people simply do not have. Somebody may know their refrigerator stopped working after a power fluctuation, but expecting them to remember the precise minute of the outage three months later can feel unreasonable.
The perception, whether accurate or not, is that the process places most of the burden on the customer, who is already dealing with financial loss.
The reality is that electricity is not a luxury service. It sits at the centre of modern life. Every home, business, government office, school, health facility, and institution depends on it.
When reliability becomes a recurring concern, the issue extends beyond inconvenience and becomes a national development issue. That is why government, regulators, and DOMLEC all have a responsibility to address these concerns openly and honestly. Consumers should not be left guessing about the condition of the network or wondering whether repeated outages have simply become the new normal.
Dominicans are generally a patient people on the Nature Isle, perhaps more patient than most others. But patience should never be mistaken for indifference. We, the people, are paying attention, and we are talking. Most importantly, we are growing tired of feeling as though we are carrying the risk every time the lights flicker.
DOMLEC, what the public wants now is not another explanation about what happened last night. What Dominica wants is confidence that, six months from now, this conversation will no longer be necessary.
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