:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/IVAPNGDUJ5HZZK4FGBOVFOA33A.jpg "Daniel Quintero will appeal to the Creg to freeze energy tariffs 1")
The Mayor of Medellin, Daniel Quinteronew income to rule on rate regulation energy. In his calculations, it was not that the Board of state suspend the Decree 0227published on February 16, 2023, and which gave powers to the President Gustavo Petro on public services. The president of the capital of Antioquia insists that prices for users be frozen, for which he will ask the Energy and Gas Regulatory Commission (Craig), which evaluates this possibility.
The power that was taken from Gustavo Petro would be the key to Daniel Quintero. According to what the mayor commented, he had already discussed with the president to authorize the tariff in other departments, so the suspension would have been a setback for his intention. That is why he will send a new letter to the Craigensuring that people no longer have any means of paying their energy bills:
“The cost of living is very high for people and public services can be a big help. The trade unions came to us, the entrepreneurs of the sector in addition; but they must understand what people are going through at home, the difficulty of being able to pay for services; So, we are going to address this same request to the CREG, so that it is they who study it and we hope that they will give us the authorization to be able to freeze the tariffs of public services”.
The departments that would benefit from the freezing of said rates would be those where the Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) provides these services, that is, in 12 departments: Antioquia (mainly Medellín), Bolívar, Caldas, Córdoba, Norte de Santander, Providencia, Quibdó, Quindío, Risaralda, Santander, Sucre and Santa Marta.
Since February 24, Daniel Quintero took advantage of the resolution of the suspended decree, to ask the president to set the said tariffs:
“As leaders, it is increasingly difficult to sleep easy when we see how much the cost of living has increased for our citizens: gasoline is twice as expensive and public services are priced irrationally. . Reaching the end of the month is more and more difficult for families, especially the poorest, ”he underlines in the request.
The ideal for the freeze to be achieved would be for the president to be able to resume regulatory functions. In the same vein, the National President assured that he will seek to appeal the decision of the Board of state:
“My government will respect, as is fundamental in a rule of law, the decision of magistrate Serrato to suspend my constitutional functions regarding public services. However, we will use all the legal resources we have before the Council of State,” he said via his Twitter account.
Indeed, the decision to freeze could come from the decision of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, as long as companies make this decision voluntarily. Let’s remember that EPM He had already done so in November 2022, when he joined the Tariff justice agreementHowever, users did not feel a major change in bills.
Of the National League of Residential Public Service Users (USPD), they assure that freezing the rates is not enough, it is necessary to decide to lower them, since it is one of the main factors for which the cost of living has increased:
“After three years of sponsoring unpaid tariffs, which leave no user at rest, it is not rational to ask for their freezing. What Colombians are asking for is a significant drop in the tariffs of all public services at home “.