Several hundreds of angry citizens gathered outside the headquarters of Greek Public Power Company (DEH)to protest the new hikes in electricity and the attached “emergency property tax” that skyrocket the end amount Greeks have to pay month in, month out.
Banner: “We pay nothing, we owe nothing”
“I dont’ pay any poll levy” was the central slogan of the protesters, the majority of them people who cannot pay the electricity bills and have to live in the dark as the PPC orders power outages. DHE cuts the electricity to 1,200 subscribers on a daily basis.
Banner: “No home without power – All together we can”
“Before the crisis, our area had 200 households without electricity, now there are 1,000. We owe nothing,” a protester from Perama, a suburb in the outskirts of western Athens told reporters.
Video: protester
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“They cut electricity in my home,” says a jobless protester holding in his hand the “power outage notice” from PPC for a debt of 1,170 euro. “My child is jobless, my wife does not work, we leave on 950 euro per month. We can’t pay the levies. We don’t have even heating,” add the man who lives in Kolliatsou district of Athens.
Banner “I don’t pay any levy”
When the protesters’ crowd swell, workers at PPC immediately closed the offices and had customers leave the office through a back door. Riot police squad rushed to the spot, but protesters marched to the Finance Ministry near Syntagma Square and the Greek parliament.
The protest was primarily organized by “Anoixti Poli”, a political fraction elected to Athens City Counsil and affiliated to left-wing SYRIZA. ( newsit.gr, nonews-news)
*** My two PPC bill from 19 July-19 November 2012: one bill 237 euro paid in Oct + one 394 euro paid in Dec = 632 euro for four months.
Trying to read the ‘unreadable’, analytically the bills looks more or less like that:
Electricity: 242 euro (power consumption 145 euro+several fees for power transport/distribution/EU energy tax 73 euro + V.A.T 24 euro
Municipality (incl property tax) & state broadcaster fees: 110 euro
Emergency Property Tax: 280 euro
In short: while pure electricity consumption is 48 euro per month (two summer months recorded additional consumption due to air-conditioning), every electricity bill I open every two months it gets me on my knees right away. And not only me…
Now this is a protest that we should all join. Do Merkal and the Troika understand we are becoming a ‘third world’ country in the EU. Under the Human Rights Act signed by all EU members, surely we have a ‘right’ to heating in our homes…apparently not for residents of Greece………………..eat or heat? (and when will it become neither?)
Since decades the powers that be in Greece have resisted any change in how the electricity was produced. As a DEKO PPCs salaries were very, VERY ‘nice’ and cost a lot of money. Prizes are always set by politicians and have never ever had any relationship with real production costs. Any newcomer in the market would be killed of in no time. And the farce around solar energy is just one of the more recent scandals.
If all this would have been prevented by the Greece state by running the PPC not as part of their back-pocket we all would now not have to pay these ridiculous hikes and levies.
Protest is very good. But they have to aimed at the people who got us into this hell and is doing their damndest to keep us there: the Greek nomenklatura.
The political terrorists are murdering you with taxes and laws and you beg them for help? Maybe that’s the problem…No?
“surely we have a ‘right’ to heating in our homes”
At whose expense? Do you have a right to own other people and their earnings? By definition a right must be free…You can’t enslave others or it’s not a right.