Union Fenosa challenges watchdog agency's penalty

RED Union Fenosa has said in a press release it disagrees with the decision of the National Energy Regulatory Agency to impose a penalty on the utility for low standard provision of services, calling it baseless, Info-Prim Neo reports. On December 29 the Agency penalized Union Fenosa for failing to duly deal with consumers' complaints concerning deviations from the admissible voltage level. But the utility argues the penalty was imposed in contradiction to earlier rules, which recognize the impossibility to deal with certain malfunctions within a 5 days' period. RED Union Fenosa further argues that some repair works may take longer than expected for a number of reasons, including bad weather conditions, a fact acknowledged in the Safety Regulations, which allow for a term of more than 8 days for such cases. Under the Agency's decision, Union Fenosa shall reduce the power distribution tariff by 0.5% for the failure to deal with consumer complaints within 5 days. The estimated value of the penalty is 2.6 million lei ($214,000).