THE ELECTRICITY Authority is seeking to play down claims that electricity bills have been soaring beyond reason in recent months.
Complaints have been mounting among consumers, some saying their bills have doubled over recent months, with one disgruntled customer reporting that she received a ludicrously expensive bill when she wasn’t even in the country.
Alix Norman, who lives in Nicosia, said her bills for the past six months have been £50, when they are usually £25. Norman lives alone, and she says her energy consumption is frugal. Her most recent bill was the same, despite the fact that she was in the UK for one of the two months of the billing period, and had made a point to turn off all the electricity before leaving.
Costas Gavrielides from EAC admitted to the Cyprus Mail that prices had increased over the past year, but to nowhere near the levels that some consumers have been suggesting. “From July to August 2005, the price was 6.89 cents per KWh. A year later the price was at 7.74 cents per KWh. This is an increase of 12.3 per cent, not double,” said Gavrielides. He added the price of electricity was printed on the bill, and so any above average increase was due to an increase in the customers’ consumption, instead of an increase in the basic price.
Gavrielides did offer an additional explanation, saying electricity meters could occasionally be faulty. “If this is the case then the EAC will reimburse any overcharged customers,” he added
However, Norman said she had been on to the EAC about the obvious mistake on her bill, and had come up against flat denial. “I am not concerned with any necessary price increase, but when a mistake has been made I expect it to be dealt with. This has been going on for months now, and still nothing has been done to resolve the situation,” she said.
Petros Marcou from the Consumer Association said that there have been several other complaints of a similar nature. He said these complaints had been reported to the EAC, and that they had said that they would look into the problem.
“They said that they are looking into it, and they will let us know the results of their investigation in a couple of weeks,” said Marcou.
Gavrielides explained that the increase of 12.3 per cent was due to the continuing rise in the price of oil. Cyprus is almost wholly dependant on hydrocarbon fuels for its energy production, with over 90 per cent of its electricity production coming from oil products.
Cyprus is also the only EU member to be completely dependant on imports of energy resources, with the only ‘home grown’ energy coming from solar panels. This makes Cyprus especially sensitive to fluctuations in oil prices.
However, in recent figures published by Eurostat (the Statistical Office of the European Communities) Cyprus showed the third largest decrease in energy consumption, with a decrease of 4.5 per cent from 2004 to 2005.
