Bender residents 'hiding' children to lower utility bills

Authorities in Bender town have discovered that many parents avoid registering their children as residents of their apartments so that they can reduce utility bills, Info-Prim Neo's field correspondent reports. As most of Bender's homes lack measuring contrivances, water and electrical bills are calculated as fixed rates multiplied by the number of persons inhabiting a given apartment, tempting many apartment owners to understate this number. A consequence, among other, is that the town's public education department doesn't know the actual number of children who are supposed to attend school and kindergartens. Teachers are forced to go from door to door to find out what the real situation is. Experts say that, as a rule, the children who are not registered as residents of their parents' apartments are from poor families. Some of them get to sit at a school desk for the first time at the ages of 10-15. The town administration considers that the birth certificates are not enough to keep accurate records of the children and plans to set up a special commission, composed of police staff, clerks and migration officers, to clarify the situation.