Mexico’s national energy commission, the CFE, confirmed Tuesday’s power outages in several states.
In Yucatán, outages were reported in several areas of Mérida, as well as other communities including Progreso, Umán and Oxkutzcab.
The CFE insists that the power cuts were scheduled ahead of time to stabilize the power grid.
Customers on social media dismissed the explanation, which was largely seen as an attempt to avoid responsibility.
Several users on Twitter pointed out that Yucatán had not been included in the scheduled outages, and that the CFE made little to no effort in notifying consumers about the interruption to the power supply beforehand. Last-minute warnings went to customers in Aguascalientes, Colima, México State, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas that a rolling blackout would last between 6 and 11 p.m.
Documents outlining the scheduled power interruptions circulated online after the fact and did indeed include Yucatán in the list of affected regions.
Earlier: CFE blames worker shortage on guesstimated electric bills.
The CFE also denied responsibility for a separate outage on the same day, affecting over 7 million users in northern Mexico. On this occasion, the CFE shifted the blame to weather in the United States and the interruption of their supply chain.
Several lawmakers have called on CFE’s general director, Manuel Bartlett Díaz, to account for failures in the national power grid. Bartlett Díaz has remained silent on the issue.
In late December the CFE confirmed a power outage that hit 13 states including Yucatán and Quintana Roo and affected over 10 million people.
