Residents of a Monmouthshire village are entering a fifth week without telephone or internet service.
A power surge on Monday 24th September caused damage to hundreds of meters of aerial cable in St Maughans as well as numerous telegraph poles, two of which were totally decimated.
While BT Openreach has undertaken major engineering work in order to restore permanent service to the majority of properties, a number of villagers are still waiting to be reconnected more than a month later.
Monmouth MP David Davies visited St Maughans on Friday afternoon and met with those affected, many of whom run businesses in the area.
“Openreach have been working extremely hard over the past week, although it’s a very late response to a problem which should have been prioritised earlier,” he said.
“We’re not just talking about one person – the whole village was cut off. In a rural area where mobile phone reception is also poor, residents have effectively been left without any way of communicating with the outside world.
“I’m told things have been very difficult indeed, especially for those who operate businesses out of St Maughans and have been left severely out of pocket by the ongoing delay in completing repair work.
“One resident has had to work from London instead of working from home for the past four weeks. He tells me this has been incredibly hard, especially as he has a young family.
“Having spoken with engineers, I’m aware this hasn’t been a straightforward case to resolve as fault upon fault was discovered and a large amount of cabling and pole work was required. In all honesty, I don’t think they were fully aware of the scale of the problem to begin with.
“However, we live in the 21st century digital era and the fact it’s taken five weeks to get this far is simply not good enough.”
Mr Davies raised the issue with BT’s Head of Parliamentary Affairs during a meeting in Westminster last Tuesday (16th October) and said he would “keep on chasing” until everyone has been reconnected.