Opinion One-size-fits-all water tariff is ‘legalised robbery’

IF A vendor knowingly charges you for a product you aren’t receiving, instead providing you with a cheaper version, what does that amount to?

A breach of the law, surely — especially if the product is such that the you cannot easily verify exactly what you have been given?

Apply that to thousands of people, unwittingly charged for Turkish water when they’re not even connected to the network that supplies it and are still being supplied with the local water they have always had for half the price, and the breach might be deemed fraud on a grand scale. Injustice at the very least.

Add in the suggestion that this is the sole way of charging for local authority-administered water under TRNC law, and according to a consumer champion it is nothing less than “legalised robbery” — an assertion it’s hard to argue with.

Municipalities say they are unhappy with the one-size-fits-all approach, but their hands are tied.

The government, meanwhile, wants precisely that when it comes to the vastly different charges across the country — a move which would end the “postcode lottery” that sees some heavy users shelling out up to 7TL a tonne while others pay half that.

Ministers have the power to address both forms of inequity if they so choose. Their response will be interesting.

Interesting too, to see whether the Municipalities Union, conspicuous for its silence on the issue this week, will back any reform, or prefer to let its members rack up the extra profits.

Meanwhile, to those who claim it’s impossible to charge different prices to consumers, we say: smart meters.

They may have had a point in the old days of paper transactions and the “meter reader” going round on his bike, but the increasing prevalence of hightech devices directly connected to municipal headquarters, where tariffs can easily be changed at a keystroke, means the argument just doesn’t — dare we say — hold water.