TRANSCRIPT
The remote Northern Territory community of Maningrida has been crippled by a Telstra outage.
The system failure, which lasted for three weeks, affected local pre-paid electricity meters, leaving many homes without power and in staggering debt.
When Telstra fixed the connection problem, locals found they were left with huge power bills.
Maningrida resident Rowena Cooper told NITV the outage has been extremely stressful.
"I got shocked when I went back home and then I got told we are in debt like $500 and then we started to get stressed how to find money and pay the power. In the house we have family living in one house. We have four kids, every day we pay $20 -$30 so they can connect our power and it is still in debit."
It happened because prepaid power meters are common in the community, and they use the 3G network to send credit straight to the meter.
They work a bit like a prepaid mobile phone - customers buy credit from a company which then sends electricity credit directly to the prepaid power meter.
Government-owned PowerWater in the Northern Territory, says when the outage started the metres kept the power on but customers were unable to monitor their power usage.
Karen Yarnold is the manager of Aged Care and Community Services at Ma’lala Health Services.
She says the financial cost to the community has been very difficult.
"I think they need to keep whatever the old system was, that they could just put $20, $30, $40 a fortnight from their pay on to the power. But at the moment they have these huge debts. It's very stressful for clients and community members to have these debts. How are they going to pay them off? If people could see what a remote community is like. There are two shops here. Food is expensive. Equipment is expensive if you want to buy a fridge. A lot of people don't have a fridge in their house because it is too expensive to buy one."
There are concerns for aged and disability clients who may be living without power while trying to repay debt.
Ms Yarnold says companies have a responsibility to communicate clearly with communities when problems emerge.
"There’s a large population of aged and disability in the community and I think the government really has a responsibility for making sure that something happens. PowerWater and Telstra maybe need to come out to the community and actually see what’s going on and fix it – wipe the debts and fix it so it doesn’t happen again."
There are now calls for a senate inquiry in the affected communities of Maningrida and Wurruwi.
West Arnhem Regional Council Mayor Matthew Ryan wants to see more done to help remote communities that rely heavily on staying connected.
“We are relying on Telstra. The internet connection, it’s very slow – it doesn’t function at times and yet ‘she’s all good mate’, this is the attitude towards our Indigenous communities and it’s just quite appalling. The Northern Territory government knows about these disadvantages we live through the wet season and the dry season. Communication is a must in our community.”
Northern Territory Minister for Essential Services Kate Worden says the government is taking the issue seriously.
“We have been talking to Telstra around the lack of communication that went out to the community. That is the really important part – we know that from time to time systems can go down. We have it here in town as well, we saw the massive outage from Optus just last year. "
Telstra says the connection issue was caused by a mains power outage.
Belinda Small, from PowerWater, says they are getting rid of the 3G meters.
"Power and water have a meter replacement program to support the 3G changeover. That program is currently ahead of schedule and we will continue to focus on delivering that project into communities."
PowerWater says it will work with affected clients through its financial hardship assistance program.
