February 01, 2005
Georgia on my mind.
I watched this amazing documentary called Power Trip about the American Power Company AES and its struggle to keep the power turned on in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.
I'll be honest, most of those words seem very boring to me, but as soon as I started watching it, I was riveted.
Anything I have to explain about what it was about is not going to encompass this film.
When AES bought Telasi in 1999 they were only collecting payment from about 10% of their customers. They were loosing tens of thousands of dollars every day they were operating the company. The $24 dollar-a-month bill was about half of the average monthly income. But these people desperately wanted and needed electricity. They'd run wired from their neighbor’s lines in order to get it into their houses and apartments.
The entire cities electrical infrastructure needed to be repaired and redone, literally it was life-threatening.
And they couldn't collect any money.
And the Georgians were having a difficult transition from a communist country where the government just paid for their electricity to a country where they had actual rights and responsibilities.
And of course there is still lingering corruption in the government... there were assassinations... rioting....
It is a good film. See it.
But I write all of this to say (without ruining the film for those who will see it). When all was said and done, AES was helping Georgia. There were a lot of people that felt if AES failed, Georgia failed.
But back here in the ol' US of A, we were in the middle of some nice corporate scandals. Thanks to the Enron executives the energy stocks all fell drastically. The shareholders of AES were putting a lot of pressure on them to get out of Georgia, since they were losing money every second they were there...
AES was not corrupt. AES was helping. But because of other companies that were corrupt, AES was affected, and Georgia was affected.
What we do DOES matter. It DOES affect people.