Today, the administrative building of the water utility in Uzhgorod was disconnected from power supply!

"Zakarpattyaoblenergo" PJSC hopes that such forced moves will make the company take care of the proper payment for the energy consumed

Today, August 18, 2014, at 10 am, employees of the "Zakarpattyaoblenergo" PJSC, as warned, disconnected the administrative building of the ME "Uzhgorod Vodokanal" from power supply. As the Acting General Director of the "Zakarpattyaoblenergo" PJSC Artem Martyniuk told journalists during the shutdown, the company informed about the cut-off both the Vodokanal, and the city authorities, regional state administration, health service, the Security Service of Ukraine, prosecutors and the community of the city last week. The reason for the cut-off is the debt of the ME "Uzhgorod Vodokanal" to the "Zakarpattyaoblenergo" PJSC, which as of August 1, 2014 reached 2,579,000 UAH.

"Therefore, this decision is a necessary step – Artem Martyniuk said the journalists. – Unfortunately, today, when Ukraine declared a state of emergency in the energy sector, when coal mines are destroyed and power plants receive coal for electricity production intermittently, every hryvnia is counted, every company is under control."

According to the schedule, tomorrow, the power company will cut-off the power supply to the pumping stations in the village of Mynai and the "Novy" neighbourhood in Uzhgorod. This means that almost half of the city can be left without central water supply.

The director of the ME "Uzhgorod Vodokanal" Yuriy Omelianenko also spoke with reporters today. He confirmed the debt to the "Zakarpattyaoblenergo" PJSC and explained the reason why it has emerged. He said that the main problem is that people very poorly pay for consumed water. "The main reason for this lies in the populist decision of Uzhgorod City Council, when the deputies, exceeding their authority, adopted the decision whereby the population should pay at the old tariffs of 6.87 UAH per cubic meter, rather than the new ones that correspond to the cost, – Yuriy Omelianenko said. – Residents of the city in this situation do not know if they should pay or not; they think, for example, that they pay the wrong price, but they do not, because the whole country pays at the tariffs adjusted to the cost, and, therefore Uzhgorod shall pay too. But ill-considered statements led to the situation when most of Uzhgorod residents do not pay for services: while until now the rate of payment for services amounted to 104% (taking into account debt settlement for previous years), now it amounts to 50 percent. So there is a debt.

But they really have to pay, and at the new tariffs, because they comply with the legislation, they were approved by the National Commission for state regulation in utilities sector."    

Omelianenko added that in almost all regional centers of Ukraine, other cities, tariffs for water supply and sewage have been revised, adjusted to the cost, and everywhere people pay, they do not have such problems as we have. "This means only one thing: in our city, the politics again intervened in the economy, – the director of the ME "Uzhgorod Vodokanal" said. – I assume that with such populist statements about the illegitimacy of the new pricing policies for water supply, someone is preparing a political platform for the upcoming elections." 

Today the situation is stalemate: the government has not yet reacted to the problem, which can result in an environmental disaster in Uzhgorod. If the issue does not move off the ground, the "Zakarpattyaoblenergo" PJSC will be forced to cut-off electricity supply to pumping and sewage stations of the city. Currently, the only hope is that regional authorities and other agencies will help to solve the problem.