National Agency for Energetic Regulations will possibly approve tariffs for public services

The Government elaborated a draft decision regarding the transfer of the public service tariffs approving mechanism to the National Agency for Energetic Regulations (NAER). The prime-minister Vasile Tarlev, answered in this way to the solicitation of the interim Mayor of Chisinau, Vasile Ursu, who addressed to the leadership of the country to involve in solving the problem regarding the approval of the public services, inclusively water, transport, etc. which is now the competence of the Municipal council. The Mayor made this request on Saturday, 13 May, at a meeting held at the Mayoralty with the participation of the president, Vladimir Voronin, the prime-minister Vasile Tarlev and also other high-ranking officials of the local and central administration. He justified the request by the fact the councilors are behaving “populist” and will never approve new price increases for public services. He expressed his desire that the approval of the tariffs will be the competence of an independent institution. Tarlev mentioned that in case councilors will want to protect their electorate, after the tariffs will be increased, they can “subsidize” some categories of population, especially the under-privileged categories. In this context, Vladimir Voronin said that the majority of councilors are “politicized”, as the majority of MPs. But “the economic and social moments” must be solved in any conditions. Voronin declared that the Government must “set-aside” some rights so NAER “could not do whatever it wants, because otherwise the population will have to vote NAER, not the political parties”.