Prosecutor General’s Office intends to deal with mass power outages in Dagestan

The Prosecutor General’s Office has sent a commission to Dagestan to deal with mass power outages in the republic. Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov instructed to promptly take measures to restore the rights of citizens in connection with numerous accidents at substations and interruptions in their supply of electricity and water. As one of the reasons for interruptions in power supply, the chaotic, sometimes spontaneous development of the Dagestan suburbs is called.

The problem of dilapidated local power grids is already three decades old, and the surge of attention to it from the authorities coincides, as a rule, with the hottest summer days, when residents of cities and villages, exhausted by many hours or even days of blackouts, decide to protest. The last such action took place in Makhachkala on Wednesday. Residents of several houses on Hajiyev Street in the center of the capital of the republic blocked traffic on the roadway, armed with pallets as shields. The Minister of Energy and Tariffs of the republic, Marat Shikhaliev, employees of the mayor’s office and the police had to settle the situation.

The head of the republic, Sergei Melikov, also reacted to what is happening. He warned Dagestanis against unauthorized protests: “Such “forms of dialogue” will only add to our problems, giving grounds for our ill-wishers to play on people’s problems for their dishonest purposes, so in the future they will be suppressed according to all the norms of the law.”

Commenting on the situation with blackouts, Mr. Melikov recalled that the problem of dilapidated power grids is already three decades old, and the amount of work and funds needed to solve it “is too great for us to promise to achieve our goal tomorrow.”

“But in the next few years we will solve this problem!” he wrote in his Telegram channel. In Dagestan, programs are being implemented to improve the reliability of the power grids of the republic in general and Makhachkala in particular, which are calculated until 2025, he recalled: “These days I turned to the Russian government with a request to consider the possibility of financing the necessary work. I hope that this appeal will be supported.”

It should be noted that in recent decades, Makhachkala and other cities of Dagestan have faced a jump in population and rapid, sometimes uncontrolled development of the suburbs, which, among other things, has increased the load on the power grid. The last time large-scale discussions around the topic of energy supply took place last summer, when, due to the heat blazed transformers and power cables. Officials even then spoke about the need for serious financial investments, replacement, development and modernization of networks. “All these activities were practically not carried out in the last decades after the privatization of city enterprises,” said the then mayor of Makhachkala, Salman Dadaev. The prosecutor’s office indicated attention to the problem, the courts began to file claims and impose fines against the branch of PJSC Rosseti North Caucasus – the company Dagenergo. However, a year later, with the advent of abnormal heat, everything happened again.

Residents of not only the Dagestan capital suffer from massive and prolonged shutdowns. Last Wednesday at the substation “Derbent” there was a fire in the cable channel, more than 30 thousand subscribers were left without electricity in the southern part of the city and in the settlements of the Derbent region. De-energized pumping stations stopped, the authorities had to organize the supply of water to residents. The satellite city of Makhachkala, Kaspiysk, also suffers from lack of light in houses and lack of water. Citizens complain not only about emergency shutdowns, but also about planned, rolling ones, about which, however, the energy company does not warn in advance.

On Thursday, an unscheduled meeting of the government operational headquarters was held in Makhachkala.

As of 11:00 am on August 10, officials reported, about 42,000 people were left without electricity in Derbent, about 10,000 in Makhachkala, 5,000 in the Magaramkent district, and 3,600 in Kumtorkalinsky.

In response to the call of Prime Minister Abdulmuslim Abdulmuslimov to establish feedback with the population, Roman Levchenko, General Director of Rosseti North Caucasus PJSC, assured that “the issue will be worked out with responsible persons.” “The main thing is why yesterday the citizens took to the streets of Makhachkala? This is a lack of feedback,” said Mr. Abdulmuslimov. “I agree,” replied Mr. Levchenko. Note that the lack of feedback was also discussed last summer.

The commission of the Prosecutor General’s Office sent to Dagestan will investigate the causes and circumstances of the incident together with representatives of the Russian Ministry of Energy, Rostekhnadzor and Rosseti. However, preliminary conclusions have already been formulated: “The current situation is primarily due to chaotic multi-storey buildings, uncalculated capacity of power facilities and illegal connections to power grids.”

According to Russian Deputy Minister of Energy Yevgeny Grabchak, who commented on the situation on the air of Rossiya 24, power outages in the republic are associated with underinvestment in the region’s power grid complex due to non-payments. A reconstruction program is planned, he said, and budget funds are expected to be allocated. However, the Dagestanis will have at least another four years to wait for a full-fledged solution to the problem, judging by the given terms.

Julia Rybina, Makhachkala