Expensive power bills leave communities in the dark

A remote community in WA has revealed it gets two or three per cuts a week as local leaders have called for assistance to manage electricity service.

Leah Umbugai, chair of the Mowanjum community, 2300 kms north of Perth, told the ABC almost every house relied on pre-paid electricity and families often had to suffer 24-hour outages.

“It became a norm for us because every wet season we’ll have no power,” she said.

Ms Umbugai said people in the community struggled to find jobs or access services to manage finances effectively, which led to an inability to afford power, and why most were on prepaid agreements with companies like Horizon.

About 1700 households in the Kimberley are on pre-paid arrangements with many left in the dark during the hot, wet season.

The Federal government released its First Nations Clean Energy Strategy last year which stated it wanted to transition 80 per cent of remote communities to renewable by 2030.

Communities on low incomes, in hot conditions, with spiralling food costs, are finding it extremely hard to make ends meet. Ands without power food will quickly go bad.

“We make a fire outside the house. We still have to do that in order to have hot water, food. It shouldn’t be that way,” Ms Umbugai said.