SA “Apa-Canal Chisinau” (ACC) says that it could stop singing direct contracts with dwelling owners if an amendment introduced recently by the Economy Ministry’s Commission for the Examination and Coordination of Standard Contracts is not cancelled, the company’s director Constantin Becciev said at Monday’s meeting of the Chisinau City Hall, Info-Prim Neo reports. The amendment does not allow the water supplier to oblige the h residential consumers to pay the difference between the consumed volumes of water shown on the common and private meters. The Commission described this clause as abusive, saying that it violates consumers’ rights and weakens the apartment metering policy. On the other hand, the ACC director said that the introduced amendment will make the company bankrupt. “Until present, we sustained losses of 3.5-4 million lei a month. If this amendment is implemented, the losses will rise to 5 million lei. This will inevitably lead to the bankruptcy of ACC,” Becciev said. He said that the losses caused by the difference in volumes total about 250 million lei. According to Becciev, this money was stolen from the company’s financial circuit. He also said that they could appeal to court to have that stipulation cancelled. But the Mayor of Chisinau Dorin Chirtoaca said that a trial will take a lot of time and the court decision is predictable. “The water is lost either because there are losses in the internal network or because the meters are inexact. It was a mistake to allow the people to install private meters without discussing the situation of the while block. As there were no contracts between the housing sector managers and people, the people now do not understand certain aspects concerning the situation of the whole block, not only of the private apartment. Those contracts could help us make the dwellers more responsible and take care of the common property,” the mayor said, describing the Commission’s decision as “unfavorable approach”. ACC has signed about 10,000 direct contracts with residential consumers.