The Chisinau City Council (CMC) has cancelled the charge for thermal energy of 540 lei, fixed on January 25, 2007. The decision was supported by a majority vote of 27 councillors, including those from the majority coalition of the CMC and the Humanist-Democratic Party. Many of the councillors who voted for the abrogation affirmed that the city budget has got enough money for compensating the increase in the tariff from 232 to 540 lei per Gcal for all Chisinau inhabitants. The leader of the Liberal-Democratic faction, Alexandru Tanase, stated that his group voted for cancelling the decision made in January because it was an illegal one and didn’t have any financial coverage. CMC has no basic obligations to offer compensations, this being the responsibility of the Government. The Liberal-Democratic group will further support an approval of a charge which would be suitable to the economic situation of “Termocom” and which would take into account the price of natural gas, said Tanase. According to him, today’s vote of the Liberal-Democrats was conditioned on the CMC’s vote for a suitable tariff for “Termocom” at the next meeting. If the CMC decides to further offer compensations for heat, the Liberal-Democrats will insist that the Mayor and City Hall services come with budget proposals. “Six months have passed, and we still haven’t heard any feasible idea for increasing the budget”, said the councillor. The leader of the Liberal group, Corina Fusu, stated that efforts are being made in order to come up with a new regulation for offering compensations for heat to the disadvantaged population. According to her, the CMC will compensate the increase in the charge only for the poor families. In this case, the amount of money covered by the budget would be much smaller than the sum needed to cover compensations for all Chisinau inhabitants. Earlier, at the City Council’s meeting on November 27, the financial manager of “Termocom”, Vitalie Morii, stated that returning to the old charge would deal a financial blow to the company. Morii warned that in case the new charge of 540 lei is cancelled “Termocom” will provide thermal energy for December up to 35-40 degrees, instead of the required 80-82 degrees. Until now, the city budget has spent 123 million lei on compensations, and other 90 million lei are expected to cover the period ending on November 1.