Greek economic crisis forces more and more people to a life without electricity. Debts and shiccored incomes, unemployment, rising costs. No wonder that people are unable to pay utility bills. And especially the most expensive one: the electricity bill. Apart from the pure electricity amount to be paid for consumption and Value Added Tax, the electricity bill contains also additional fees like municipality, property and state broadcast fees and some fees of unknown destination as well the the emergency property tax. These extras normally multiply the original bill for electricity to such heights that the vulnerable groups of the society are not able to pay anymore.
On Thursday, the CEO of Public Power Company, Arthouros Zervos revealed that PPC cuts the power of 30,000 customers every month across the country due to outstandiing debts. The outages refer to private households and businesses.
Zervos noted that despite the current economic turndown, the overwhelming majority of PPC customers fulfil their obligations.
“A minority of PPC customers though require distinct treatment, they ask for arrangements which they normally do not keep.” ((news247)
I would be very much interested to know since when the 30,000-power outages per month is the … normal practice. Also how many are private households, how many are businesses that were closed down. Just out of curiosity to see how many people live in the darkness in the European Union of 2012.
UPDATE: It seems DEH has not exact data of how many are private households, businesses or summer houses.
According to DEH, outages for 2012 were:
Jan 7,000 Feb 8,000 Mar 25,200 Apr 19,500 Oct 30,000 (no data released for May-Sept)
Once, just once in my life I want to get proper official data and what in the world!
They’d better cut it off to the air condition of Mr. Fuchtel and film how he dies after working 5 hours.
shame on you!
How much does the Greek government owe the electricity company? As they are seemingly out of money for everything else, it would be logical to conclude that they haven’t paid their utility bills themselves. Any chance of “lights out” in government buldings? A bit of their own medicine might just do wonders…
“… how many people live in the darkness in the European Union of 2012.”
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I’d like to propose an answer to this, namely: surprisingly many.
Probably most customers are reconnected soon after they’re cut off.
to tell you the truth I don’t know. last night one tv 1-2 people said, they had no power and moved to relatives.
I wonder how people cope using other ways if they don’t have relatives to go to. I saw one Greek family eating by candlelight due to no lights. They were eating just pieces of boiled eggs I think.
well.. one can use lamps with acetyline (?), cook on stoves working with camping gas etc and be thankful, Promitheus stole fire from the Gods and you liv ein a country that has overcome the stone age.