THE Electricity Authority (EAC) yesterday rejected suggestions they selectively enforce company policy on unpaid bills after it emerged that they had continued to supply two companies with power, despite them owing hundreds of thousands of euros for months.
“Our policy is to facilitate people where we believe there is a need with the aim of helping the company, the workers, the EAC and the country’s economy,” EAC spokesman Costas Gavrilides told the Cyprus Mail.
This way, there is more chance for the EAC to get its money, Gavrilides said.
The spokesman said cutting a large organisation’s power would mean closure and workers and their families being left out in the cold.
He denied treating big clients differently from ordinary households which routinely have their electricity cut if they fail to settle their bills.
“The EAC also helps smaller clients and helps them repay bills and this has been verified by hundreds of EAC clients – but at some point we are also obliged to cut power,” Gavrilides said.
In her 2010 report released this week, the auditor-general, however, suggested the EAC used double standards when it came to unpaid bills.
The report listed two cases of companies, one owing around €350,000, the other €538,000, whose electricity was not cut, even after they failed to honour repayment agreements.
Gavrilides said the authority believes it gets better results the way it handles such matters, instead of cutting power immediately and “putting people out on the street without work and not being able to pay”.
The company that owes €538,000 has already told the EAC that it cannot meet its obligation because its factory was destroyed by fire. The other one manages a shopping centre in Nicosia.
The authority also played down suggestions in the report, which were also published in the media, that it did not meet its commitment to cut operational expenditure by 10 per cent in 2010 and 2011.
“While the budgeted operational expenses in 2010 – based on the budget approved by parliament – were €62.7 million, the real expenditure was limited to €51.2 million, representing 18.3 per cent in savings,” the authority said in a written statement.
Regarding a 4.3 per cent increase in operational expenses for 2011, cited in the report, the EAC said this was in comparison with the actual 2009 expenditure.
The EAC said it continues its efforts to make savings and expects that the 4.3 per cent increase will be significantly reduced or wiped out altogether.
