14.08.2009
Victory of the workers of the State of Ceará

The occupation of Coelce (Electricity Company of the State of Cerá) last week by around 2000 people brought a big victory for all the workers of the state. The protest opened a discussion channel between the protesters and the energy distribution company.

According to José Josivaldo Alves de Oliveira “we have just come out of the company with great unity and solidarity amongst the workers, movements and urban and rural entities. Coelce assumed the existence of social tariff and admitted that it was not applying to the users of up to 140 kWh per month, which is the state limit in order to qualify for the reduced tariff”.

One of the results of the meeting was that from now on, Coelce will be informing about the Social Tariff on the electricity bills and in the media. “On the other hand, the social movements will continue to get organized in order to collectively hand in the auto-declarations to the distributor which has promised this time to respect the law”.

The protesters of the Movement of Dam Affected People (MAB) returned to the Secretariat of Agrarian Development, where they are camped since last Wednesday. There they will hold a big assembly where they will discuss the decisions related to yesterday’s audience with INCRA, Dnocs, Secretariat of Agrarian Development and the Secretariat of Water Resources.

According to the coordinators of the camp “we also came out victorious from this audience and we secured the promise of INCRA and the state government that they will carry out an inventory of the landless families in the proximities of the Castanhão, Figueiredo and Aracoiaba dams. Our agenda with respect to our demands for access to water and resources for the construction of wells and cisterns in the region has also advanced. A commission of the people who participated in the assembly was organized and it will carry out an inventory of the needs of each family and will begin the restructuring of the social conditions of the families affected by the Castanhão dam”.

It was also defined in the meting that the Secretariat of Water Resources will follow the demands of the people affected by the Aracoiaba dam in the Maciço do Baturité region.

Electricity social tariff

Since May 2007, an order emitted by the Regional Federal Tribunal guaranteed that all families consuming electricity up to the maximum regional limit, are entitled to receive the discounts foreseen in the Low Income Social Tariff law without having to be registered in some of the government’s social assistance programs. For that, it is enough just to provide an auto-declaration to the energy distributor of the region.