Kıb-Tek ‘is charging for out of order street lights’

THE Cyprus Turkish Electricity Authority (Kıb-Tek) is raking in millions of Turkish lira for street lights that do not work, it has been claimed.

Kıb-Tek chair Turan Büyükyılmaz said that many street lights are out of order because of “faults” and that it is an issue that “exhausts Kıb-Tek the most”.

A study by Cyprus Today’s sister newspaper Kıbrıs revealed that there are roughly 190,000 electricity bill payers who each pay a monthly “fixed fee” of 18.08TL to cover the salaries of Kıb-Tek employees, plus 9.6TL a month for the maintenance and repair of street lights.

This amounts to around 217TL and 115TL per year per bill respectively, providing Kıb-Tek with additional annual income of 41,222,400TL in fixed fees and 21,888,000TL for street lighting – around 63.1 million TL in total.

“People in our country pay the government millions in taxes each month but unfortunately are not getting the essential services they are paying for in return, which is then creating bigger problems,” the Kıbrıs report said.

“One of the TRNC’s ongoing issues for years has been the pitch-black roads, which have been the cause of dozens of accidents and injuries. Everyone pays [Kıb-Tek] a monthly fee to light the roads but do not receive this service. . . It is obvious that the millions of TL collected monthly . . . for street lighting is not being used for this purpose. It makes us wonder what this money is being spent on.”

The report added that Kıb-Tek is responsible for illuminating roads within municipality boundaries, whereas the Highways Department handles the lighting of inter-district roads.