Guadeloupe: electricity restored everywhere this Sunday after two days of outage

Part of Guadeloupe spends its second night in a row under curfew. The prefecture renewed this measure on Saturday evening in around ten municipalities in response to the urban violence that occurred following the widespread power cut, which has affected the archipelago since Friday.

Power was restored everywhere this Sunday in the archipelago. “At midnight (local time), EDF teams resupplied all customers in Guadeloupe (i.e. 230,000 customers),” the energy company announced on Sunday. “EDF teams are continuing actions to secure the electricity network,” it is stated in a press release. A quarter of homes were still without power on Saturday evening.

A partial curfew

The curfew, imposed from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. (from 3 to 10 a.m. Paris time), concerns sectors of the following municipalities: Abymes, Baie-Mahault, Basse-Terre, Gosier, Lamentin, Le Moule, Morne- à-l’Eau, Pointe-à-Pitre, Petit-Canal, Sainte-Anne and Sainte-Rose. It aims to “prevent the risk of disturbances to public order” after the “unacceptable urban violence” which took place during the night from Friday to Saturday, the prefect said in a press release.

In Pointe-à-Pitre, in the capital of Guadeloupe, eleven shops were vandalized, including a supermarket, a bank and three jewelry stores “attacked with a backhoe loader”, according to Deputy Public Prosecutor Alexandra Onfray. At the scene, the police came under fire with live ammunition. Two people were arrested, according to the same source.

Social movement for more than a month

A widespread blackout affected Guadeloupe from 8:30 a.m. local time on Friday, “following the illegal shutdown” of the engines of the EDF-PEI Jarry power plant, which supplies the majority of the electricity. electricity in the territory of nearly 380,000 inhabitants.

Strikers at the power station told AFP on Friday that they had cut off the engines “after the management summoned one of (their) heads, perhaps with a view to dismissal.” The social movement, which has lasted since September 15, concerns the implementation of an agreement signed at the beginning of 2023, after two months of strike to demand compliance of contracts and remuneration with labor law. It has since caused power cuts affecting up to 100,000 homes.

On Monday, EDF-PEI management proposed the signing of an agreement which the CGT-Guadeloupe energy federation refused, a final sticking point relating to the method of calculating paid leave.

In a press release published on Saturday evening, the Energy Federation of the CGTG (FE-CGTG) affirmed that “its calls for strikes are still in compliance with the red cross plan (supplies necessary for feeding all priority lines) in conjunction with the prefecture”. EDF, via its subsidiary EDF-PEI, filed a complaint against X on Friday, for “endangering others”, at the Pointe-à-Pitre police station, the company said.

“Serious consequences”

Criticisms and outraged reactions to this “black-out” have multiplied. The Union of Companies of Guadeloupe, representative of Medef in the territory, denounced a “criminal act”, adding that “the smallest companies will pay the heaviest price with losses of stocks and materials”.

The president of the region Ary Chalus denounced “the irresponsibility of the acts which seriously jeopardized the health of Guadeloupeans and the country’s economy” while deploring “the sequences which led to this disastrous episode”. At 5 p.m. Saturday (10 p.m. in Paris), electricity had been restored to “178,200 customers”, or 77% of those affected, according to EDF.