The hot water supply to the nursery schools in Chisinau has not been resumed yet. At Monday’s meeting of the City Hall, the technical director of Termocom SA Vladimir Babici said that the company does not have technical possibilities to reconnect the preuniversity education institutions to the hot water supply because there are no direct pipelines from the thermal points. Earlier, the administrator of Termocom SA Dionisie Antocel said that the hot water supply to kindergartens was stopped accidentally and will be soon resumed. According to Vladimir Babici, the kindergartens cannot be reconnected also because Termocom does not have financial resources following the cancellation of the heating charge of 540 lei by the Chisinau Municipal Council. Babici said that the payments for the natural gas consumed in the process of producing heat made up 72.5% in eleven months, while for this month only 5.3%. He also said that Moldova-Gaz SA asked Termocom to settle the bills for the current consumption otherwise it will reduce the volume of gas down to the level of payments as from December 18. Mayor General Dorin Chirtoaca said that the kindergartens must not suffer as a result of the illegal actions taken by Termocom because there are economic entities that continue paying 540 lei per gigacalorie of heat. By such activities, the mayor says, Termocom SA infringes the stipulations of the contracts signed with these institutions. Vladimir Babici replied that Termocom SA is ready to answer for breaking the contractual obligations according to the legislation. Deputy mayor Vladimir Cotet said that 39 of the 124 nursery schools of the municipality have been connected to the hot water supply. Termocom did not oppose. The 39 kindergartens had direct connections to the thermal points. The other kindergartens will be supplied with hot water when the blocks of flats are also reconnected. The mayor asked Termocom SA to present the calculations for the new heating charge for 2007, coordinated with the National Agency for Energy Regulation (ANRE) and carried out according to the present methodology for calculating the heating charge. According to the mayor, the charge of 715 lei demanded by Termocom SA was not coordinated with ANRE and therefore cannot be considered by the Chisinau Municipal Council. At the start of last week, Termocom SA stopped supplying hot water in the capital city and cut off the City Hall from the heat supply for 24 hours. The mayor says that the institution was reconnected to the heat supply because a lot of economic entities working in the district were disconnected alongside the City Hall. “These entities have other relations with the central administration and managed quickly to convince Termocom to reconnect the whole district, including the City Hall,” the mayor says. Dorin Chirtoaca considers that by such acts, Termocom continues to exert pressure on the City Hall and blackmail it in an attempt to make the people more and more concerned about the situation. According to the mayor, this is a lever for intimidating the local administration, which wants to know the real size of the expenses of producing heat. The Chisinau Municipal Council on December 4 decided to restore the old charge of 233 lei because the decision to increase the charge up to 540 lei taken in January 2007 did not have legal support and financial coverage, while the Government did not allocate subsidies for heat. The decision was also made because the municipal authorities do not have financial resources to cover the difference in the old and new charges (307 lei per gigacalorie).