The public utility Apa-Canal Chisinau (ACC) denies the accusations concerning the invoicing of water volumes that are larger than the volumes measured by the individual water meters of consumers. According to the company, the invoicing of drinking water for each apartment is the responsibility of apartment building managers, but the fraudulent schemes used by some dwellers to avoid paying for the consumed water affect the other dwellers too, who must afterward pay for this water, the supplier says in a communiqué, quoted by IPN.
Under the Law on the Public Water Supply and Sewerage Service and in accordance with the contracts signed with the managers of apartment buildings, the ACC is obliged to supply water only up to the common meter, installed in the apartment building. Thus, the ACC does not invoice the drinking water used in apartments, but issues the general invoice to the apartment building manager. It is the duty of the given managers to check, seal up, read the meters installed inside the apartment building and to invoice the drinking water for each apartment separately.
Given the problems faced by the managers of a number of apartment buildings, the ACC offered them assistance in carrying out unplanned inspections to check the water meters. It was established that the difference in the volume of water metered by the common block meter and the volume reported by the dwellers is the result of the irresponsibility of all the sides involved in the use of meters, the inefficient metering process and inappropriate invoicing and processing. Anther cause is the avoidance by bad payers of paying the real volume of consumed water and the honest payers thus have to pay the difference.
The ACC recommends that the process of checking the individual apartment meters should be intensified and the persons caught illegally metering the used water must be promptly penalized. The company denies the accusations that it invoices also the losses sustained in the public water supply networks and assures the end-users that these losses are covered exclusively by the supplier.
