Several residents of the rural Guraidhoo island in Thaa atoll took to the streets Monday to demonstrate against state failure to resolve continuing power outages there.

Some of the signs at the demonstration read ‘three months without guarantee of power’ and ‘where is the generator the state promised?’. Demonstrators maintained that the initiative for it was taken on mostly by the island’s youth.

Ali Rasheed, chief of Guraidhoo’s local government council, said that power outages have been persistent for three consecutive months and happen so sporadically that the ‘island experiences cuts about every 20 minutes’. Guraidhoo has a total population of about 2,100 people.

Rasheed further said that the state utilities corporation, FENAKA, had made a ‘word-of-mouth pledge to install a new generator on the island.

This pledge came in the form of an address made by incumbent First Lady Fathimath Ibrahim, which was supported by Ahmed Shareef, who was then managing director of the company and is now chief of the Elections Commission.