Lack of warm water wreaks havoc in BraŞov 100 requests a day for cancellation of centralized water heating contracts

So far, 1,520 citizens of Braşov have cancelled their contracts with water heating provider CET Braşov. Florin Cuţitei, General Manager of the company, says that these last few days, the number of requests for the termination of contracts has increased to a hundred a day, as such requests will no longer be accepted after August 22nd. Mr. Cuţitei says: "We would advise citizens to keep their contracts if more than half of their neighbors are still connected to the water heating grid. It makes more sense to cancel their contracts if there are just a handful of apartments still connected to the grid. Of course, disconnecting from the network can work when the neighbors haven"t paid their bills".

The good news is that citizens who paid their bills on time, will still benefit from warm water and heating this winter, even if they belong to homeowners associations that haven"t paid their bills. The General Manager of CET Braşov says that the company only recovered 1.2 million lei out of the total amount of 12 million it is owed by its customers. "We hope to succeed paying at least 40-50% of our debt in order to negotiate with Gaz de France Suez Energy România in order to get them to supply us with natural gas again", Mr. Cuţitei said. Starting June 25th, CET Bra ov disconnected almost 20,000 households that haven"t paid their gas bills, as this caused the company to accrue a huge unpaid debt towards its natural gas supplier, România. Officials of CET Braşov claim that claim that the company will begin providing heating again once all its debtors pay up their bills, even though the company owes 60 million lei to Gaz de France Sues Energy România, and only has 12 million lei in debt to collect from its household customers.

CET Braşov still has uncollected subsidies from the state and from the city of Braşov. "The Ministry of the Economy owes us 3 million lei, and the Local Council of Braşov owes us 2 million lei", Cuţitei added. A gigacalorie produced by CET Braşov costs 420 lei, which it then sells for 360 lei, and the difference has to be subsidized.

THE GOOD NEWS is that citizens that paid all their heating bills will have warm water and heat this winter.