The great electricity confidence trick

SOMETIME in March, we were informed by Kıb-Tek that our electricity prices were going to increase considerably.

So it came about, in April everybody was shocked and amazed by the massive increase in their electricity bills. There were large scale protests everywhere.

So much so, the authorities said they were going to backtrack and not increase the prices by so much. But they DIDN’T say the reduction was only temporary and the large increases would go up again in May. This in my opinion is a misleading “con trick”.

To make out the prices would not go up and then after the protests had died down to reintroduce the massive increases again was downright misleading lies.

As I have said in a previous letter to Cyprus Today, why cannot those large companies, hotels and government departments that don’t pay for their electricity, be made to do so?

It was reported in Cyprus Today (April 9) that “Five ministries ‘owe 31 million TL’”. That is probably the tip of the iceberg. One of your letter writers said that the “names of the debtors should be publicised showing amounts owing and the length of time the debt has been outstanding and this list made available to the hard-working PUBLIC TAXPAYER, who are being victimised”.

It is unbelievable that it has just been introduced that if the public don’t pay their electricity bill within a certain time, they will be cut off.

Well, why not do that to the large corporations that owe millions? Perhaps then there wouldn’t be the need for such large electricity price increases to the ordinary public.

Richard Chamberlain, Ozanköy