Belco yesterday denied claims that it fails to swiftly service North Hamilton and provided a detailed account of work done on Court Street in recent years.

Residents and business owners of the area complained of poor service and safety issues after a utility pole broke and injured a pedestrian. Linda Smith, the external relations vice president of Belco, said that comments made about the quality of service between Dundonald Street and Victoria Street are the result of numerous, unrelated causes and that all of them have been dealt with in a timely manner. On Friday a truck that was attempting to pull out of a parking spot got entangled in a guide wire. The driver, unaware that he was attached to a utility pole, continued to drive off. The utility pole broke, resulting in a transformer, lines and portions of the pole falling to the ground.

Rose Marie Watts was, unfortunately, walking by the pole when this happened and received an electric shock from the resulting surge. She sustained injuries and was rushed to the hospital. She has since been released and is recovering at home.

Roxanne Christopher, a business owner who was at the scene of the incident, told the area has had a lot of issues with service from Belco recently. She spoke of poles catching on fire several times and regular power outages.

?We have been telling them for years that something needs to be done because someone is going to get hurt,? Ms Christopher said. ?What is it going to take now?

?I don?t know if it is institutionalised discrimination but they have continually ignored us. We are in the Corporation of Hamilton but don?t get the same level of service as Front Street or Reid Street. It?s just plain wrong.?

Ms Smith said the claims of institutionalised discrimination were unfounded. She said that there have been a number of issues in the area since the winter of 2004 which were all dealt with swiftly. ?At that time, there were problems caused by trees in the area damaging wires and causing faults, resulting in outages,? she said. ?The tree issue was dealt with. There was also lightning damage to a line that was undetectable until it was put under load stress. In the summer of 2005 there were new issues resulting from increased consumption of electricity in the vicinity, resulting in overloading of the system.?

She said that Belco has dealt with its portion of the overloading situation, but that a customer who is supposed to be serviced by an ?independent vault? has not completed his portion of the work. This means that the planned transfer, which would deal with overloading, has not taken place. Ms Smith said that despite the work not being done by the individual, Belco installed additional transformers in the area in August to alleviate overloading.