Chisinau citizens could be imposed “to benefit” of hot water

After less then a month since the declared intention to open in Chisinau several public bathing houses, the interim Mayor of Chisinau, Vasile Ursu intends to give up to this idea in favour of reconnecting nearly 800 blocks of flats to the hot water network. At the operative meeting on Monday he requested in a very strict way from the municipality services to persuade the inhabitants of the named blocks to accept hot water. According to the opinion of Vasile Ursu, the blocks were disconnected at the request of the association administrators without the agreement of the inhabitants. He brought economical arguments which proved that using hot water will cost less than visiting public bathing houses. Vasile Ursu says that “the proper switches are not used” in order to convince the inhabitants of those 800 blocks of flats to accept hot water and suggests summoning general meetings of the flat owners’ associations which could compel the administrators to change their position. Solicited by Info-Prim Neo, the president of the League for Protecting Consumers’ Rights, Roman Mihaies said that many persons gave up to hot water because the tariffs were increased and because of the suspicious quality of this service. He thinks that the responsibility lies on the administrators of the owners’ association which requested to stop the hot water deliveries without consulting the flat owners, in this way covering other expenses. According to his opinion, the local authorities have to find out what citizens think. In case someone doesn’t want this service, no one should insist and no one can force a person to buy something if he is not willing to. The cited source considers that the public bathing houses are a USSR anachronism, a place were people can be infected with different diseases. The fitness centres with saunas, following the Western model, would be a better solution. The head of the Health Department, Victor Savin has another opinion and stated for Info-Prim Neo that the lack of a health culture generates many social diseases. Without public bathing houses the persons that live in houses and flats without proper conditions will be affected. For this category of persons the public bathing houses could be the only solution. He believes that the local authorities should offer some facilities or nominative compensations to the socially vulnerable persons in order to cover their expenses for public bathing houses. Regarding the possibility of infection with diseases Victor Savin says that by taking proper measures this situation could be avoided. In the same context the economic annalist Veaceslav Ionita declared for Info-Prim Neo that the public bathing houses are a necessity for many categories of citizens. Referring to the decision of the flat owners Veaceslav Ionita said that the refuse is generated by the fact that the present price for hot water is an administrative one, economically unjustified and misbalanced. Because of this situation, the annalist considers that a tone of water warmed in a boiler costs less than the water delivered through the centralized system. It doesn’t make sense, if taking into consideration that the hot water is an auxiliary product of the power stations which use water for the cooling system. “The hot water produced by power stations doesn’t exceed 62 Celsius grades, and delivered through the system the water is complimentarily cooled off. In this way the consumers are forced to pay high prices for low-quality water” says Veaceslav Ionita. He thinks that the hot water supplier Termocom, needs urgent reforms and the prices for hot water have to be fixed in conformity with economic calculations, not using half political or half economical ones. Several chairmen of the associations declared for Info-Prim Neo that the decision to stop the hot water deliveries was taken exclusively by the flats’ inhabitants, and a part of them took this decision because they didn’t want to “depend on the whims of the local authorities or suppliers” and installed boilers in their houses or apartments. Previously the mayors from the suburban localities supported the idea of restoring the public bathing houses saying that the population agrees with the decision. In Chisinau city, namely in the Buiucani district there is a single public bathing house that doesn’t work for many years. An economical agent opened a sauna there and for 20 lei, 4 days per week thousands of citizens from Chisinau even the ones that have centralized hot water or a boiler at home take a bath there.