Haiti demonstrators shut down power plant

This photo shows part of a road taken by people attempting to avoid gangs as they leave or return to Port-au-Prince, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, September 1, 2024. Agence France-Presse

PORT-AU-PRINCE – A Haitian power plant has gone dark after demonstrators stormed it to protest recurring blackouts in their part of the impoverished Caribbean nation, the state-owned firm that runs it said.

Electricite d’Haiti (EDH) said that “acts of invasion bordering on vandalism” had reduced production at the Peligre plant “to zero.”

The plant, with a capacity of 54 megawatts, supplies the metropolitan region of Port-au-Prince and the so-called Central Plateau region of the Caribbean country.

READ: Haiti gangs ‘aren’t even worried’ by Kenyan police

Demonstrators from the region shut the facility down on Monday to protest the frequent outages they have been suffering for months, which the EDH says are due to the failure of two transformers.

In its statement, the company said it could not get technical assistance to the plant because of rampant gang violence and crime ravaging the country.

Haiti is facing a severe humanitarian crisis, which worsened in February when the gangs that control more than 80 percent of the capital joined forces to try to overthrow the government of unpopular Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

READ: Haiti violence displacing one child every minute – UNICEF

In the last year, gang violence — including murder, looting, rape and kidnapping — forced some 578,000 people from their homes, according to the UN.

Some five million Haitians do not have enough to eat and many have no access to medical care, the international organization said.

On Wednesday, Lochard Laguerre, the mayor of the municipality of Mirebalais, who led the protest at the Peligre power station, said the facility would be reopened, though he threatened to close it again if authorities did not heed their demands.

Despite his words, Port-au-Prince remains without electricity so far.