Last Monday was a day to remember when all of the sudden I had to endure the heat for 14 hours — not because of the hot weather conditions but because, in addition, there was no power in my house. I was at work when family members called me around 10 a.m. to inform that there was no electricity in the house. I thought it was a normal power cut and power would resume shortly after maximum one hour if not less than that time. An hour later when my phone buzzed repeatedly with family members calling to state that power in the house was still not back and I had better do something about it, I took it upon myself to call the emergency number for power outages — 933 — to report the problem.
As standard procedure, they asked for my SEC account number to ensure that it was not a billing problem. When he had made sure that all bills were up to date, the representative told me that he had alerted the maintenance team and they would respond quickly. I believed him. But, at around 12:15 p.m., I had to call again to follow up only to discover that there was no record of my complaint because it was not registered in the system and there is no complaint number.
Though shocked at this lack of professionalism, I, however, without much ado filed a new complaint and this time made sure that I had a complaint number, which I received on my mobile at 12:34 p.m.
Till now it was all good. But the utter powerlessness of a person was made evident by the story of me and my family's suffering, which began at this point.
With every minute the heat began getting to us as the temperatures peaked with the afternoon. Every time I called to follow up on the status of my complaint and maintenance work, I was told they were working on it. At around 3:00 p.m., they stopped responding to any call at the 933 emergency number. And this made me really sweat — not only due to the heat, but at the prospect of not getting through to the emergency number.
I was lucky, for later at around 7:00 p.m., I finally got hold of someone at that number, who told me that the status of my complaint is showing resolved. I told him but there is no power in my house while, there is power in the whole neighborhood except in my house and in the house of the neighbor in front of me, which is not logical. He told me that there was nothing he could do.
By this time I was really boiling — because it was seven hours without electricity and no one was responding with a solution. I had to send my children to my relatives' house because they could not endure the heat, which on that day was more than 40 degrees Celsius.
I called again after an hour only to get hold of a different person at the other end of the line, but he too was just as clueless as the previous ones. Every time I would ask them when the problem would be solved, they would tell me they have no power except to send my complaints to the related departments, which is a line they have memorized very well. After an hour I called again to inquire, and this time someone told me that there was a problem in the power cabin as was stated in the status report. When I told him that power was cut only from my house and my neighbor in front, he was clueless again.
While, I had my useless conversation with the clueless manning the 933 station, I was also calling every person I knew who knew or happened to know someone at the SEC in order to solve my problem, which by that time had not been solved for 10 hours. My efforts to get a connection in the SEC were of no avail, as I had no luck in finding such a person.
Staying in the unbearable heat, I. mechanically, called one more time the emergency number and finally someone with heart and conscience answered. He was genuinely shocked that it had taken that long to address the problem. He even encouraged me to file a complaint and demand my rights and ask for compensation. He was kind enough to register a new complaint and promised to do his best to solve the problem. Within 15 minutes I received a phone call from a maintenance worker who said that he was on his way. He finally discovered that the earlier SEC workers had accidentally disconnected a wire that was connecting electricity to my house from the main neighborhood generator, which was according to the man, an easy problem to fix. Power was back shortly after that, but it took 14 hours to solve it.
My question is, who will hold SEC accountable for the pain and suffering of their negligence and carelessness toward their subscribers? If there was a natural disaster then people would understand and no one will hold them responsible. But to fix a small problem they created in the first place shouldn't take that much time. Shouldn't they be held accountable? If we as subscribers are late in payment, they will be super quick, firm and professional in disconnecting power until we pay.
Similarly, as in my case and many such cases, how are they going to compensate their subscribers?
The main power outage that hit many cities in the Western Region last week can be described as a major problem that affected many people. SEC should be thanked for their quick response in restoring power to people. But who will compensate us as subscribers when we suffer because of their negligence. Will they deduct some amount from our bills? Will they compensate us for the food that was damaged in our refrigerators because of the power outage? Almost all the people I know have suffered because of SEC and I am sure many of our readers living in the Kingdom must have faced some ordeal and have a story to share with us on SEC.
The writer can be reached at [email protected] Twitter: @anajeddawi—eng
