More than half of the debts of the municipal housing stock managing companies to the suppliers, which are estimated at about 630 million lei, represent the difference in the volumes of hot water measured by individual meters and those set at the entrance to apartment buildings. Until recently, this difference, named in bills share part, wasn’t introduced in the bill for being paid by consumers of hot water given the absence of a unit of measurement. Though the heat supplier now applies a unit of measurement, this is not approved by law. As to the other part of the debt of the housing stock managing companies, this was accumulated from the population’s debts. Therefore, the given debts cannot be claimed from the Chisinau Municipal Council. Even if the CMC is the founder of the housing stock managing companies, the latter are self-managing entities. The clarification was made by the head of the General Public Amenities Divizion Petru Gontea and comes in the wake of statements made by the administration of SA “Termoelectrica”, which supplies Chisinau municipality with heat.
Petru Gontea has told IPN that insolvency managers were named at 20 of the 23 municipal housing stock managing companies. He invoked the legislative gap as regards the difference in the volumes of water measured by individual meters of consumers and by branch pipe meters. It is not clear who and in what volume should assume the losses inside apartment buildings. In 2008, the Chisinau Council tried to clarify this situation and approved regulations that envisioned the methodology of distributing the volumes of both cold and warm water. But SA “Termocom” (which was absorbed by Termoelectrica) challenged in court these regulations and a number of points from them were suspended. As a result, it was specified that “Termocom” is not a supplier of hot water and thus does not assume the losses for the difference in volumes.
According to Petru Gontea, even if the heat supplier says it no longer accumulates debts, legally “Termoelectrica” does not distribute the volume of hot water because the hot water can be distributed only if the supplier has a contract with the manager, while the manager has a contract with dwellers. Currently, there are no such contracts. The supplier applies another law that stipulates that the volume of heat that enters the block should be fully distributed. But a unit of measurement should be then stipulated. The unit of measurement for heat and cold water is stipulated, while for hot water is not. In these conditions, the supplier set a unit of measurement that is now used, but this use is incorrect and illegal as the supplier had to submit a proposal concerning the method of invoicing the hot water to the National Agency for Energy Regulation and this should have been accepted.
As to the population’s debts, Petru Gontea said he sees no necessity of going to court to make these debts the burden of the CMC and even considers this not correct. “The legislation clearly provides that each dweller pays for what he receives from different business entities based on contracts. There is a problem here as, when suing the dwellers, they also sued the municipality, hoping that the latter will repay those debts. It won’t be possible to achieve this as the housing stock managing companies are self-managing entities,” he stated.
As to the statements that the municipal companies carry out cleanup works on the areas adjoining the housing sector, in public places with dwellers ‘money, made by the administration of “Termoelectrica”, Petru Gontea said the places near public transport stations and garbage bins and on the street are cleaned with public money, based on contracts between the Chisinau City Hall and the housing stock managers, not with dwellers’ money.
ccording to the estimates of the General Public Amenities Division, 253,245.0 lei is needed to clean the areas near apartment buildings and in places for common use in Chisinau municipality in 2017. Only 38,210.3 lei is yet available now, which is 15% of the necessary sum.
