The scenes that occurred in a suburb of Patras, Peloponnese, must have had something from a tragicomic thriller with secret agents working undercover. A unit allegedly from the public power company without wearing or carrying the logo and signs of DEH went to the home of a property owner and tried hastily to cut off the electricity. Members of the local anti-property tax movement took notice of the power-cutters men as they were climbing into the house from the fence of a neighboring home. The cutters claimed they just wanted to measure the electricity consumption. However they did manage to cut off the electricity to the property whose owner has paid the bill of the electricity consumption but not the emergency property tax.
According to local newsportal Patras Times, the “DEH” men work for private companies assigned by the public power company to cut off the electricity to emergency property tax dodgers. These “hit and cut” units consist normally by two men dressed in a kind of uniforms and go around with private cars. One is normally waiting inside the car, while the second guy jumps over fences and tries to execute his duty secretly. The news portal reports of two cases, in Rio and Agyias, where the private man assigned to cut off the power saw the dark end of a hunting riffle. The property owners had thought the man was a thief , so they took measures to defend themselves….
Cought in Cut Off Action – Wearing Gloves to Avoid Finger Prints?
The incident in Patras had also no happy end. “When the owner and neighbors took notice of the incident, they all started chasing the DEH-men, who apparently were not workers at DEH but at a private company assigned by the public power company to cut off the electricity to emergency property tax dodgers.” (Skai tv this morning)
Later, the anti-property tax movement reconnected the electricity to the property.
This morning in Patras residents protested the power cuts outside the local DEH office.
That’s another weird incident occurring in Greece of 2012, demonstrating the huge gap between the government decisions and their applications in real life. Last week the Finance Ministry heralded that there will be no electricity cuts in private households. It is more or less the same thing happening with the decisions of the Health Ministry. The ministry says it is illegal to collect 5 euro entrance fee at the emergencies of public hospitals, or pay the drug needed for Computer Tomography but in real life patients are obliged to pay the fee and buy the MCT drug.
When your right hand has no idea what your left hand is up to, then there is a major problem : your brain is unable to give correct orders for proper coordination. At the very end, you can stumble and fall upon your own feet.
