Unpaid electricity bill could plunge Russian town into darkness

Failure to pay an electricity bill for street lighting by the local authorities could lead to cutting off of power supply to the North Ossetian town of Beslan. The money owed to the regional power supplier is approximately 1.05 million dollars.

The town has a population of thirty seven thousand people. Pravoberezhny District administration, under whose jurisdiction Beslan falls, prevented a power disconnection by remitting close to ten per cent of the money owed.

Power firms have heaped the blame on the local authority officials who in turn have denied there being a problem.

A spokesperson for the Unified Energy System, Tatyana Milyayeva, revealed that disagreements between power producers, suppliers and sellers which can be attributed to bad management had reduced over the years though they were still there.

Unified Energy System is being wound up and will spawn several firms as part of a programme intended to raise money to improve the electricity network which is ageing. As part of the reform programme, Unified Energy System has been split into highly specialised units and from the first of July this year the company will officially cease operations.

The deputy director of Beslan Electricity Networks, the firm which supplies electricity to Beslan, Aslan Frayev, admitted that there was an outstanding debt owed by the local authority of which only part had been paid.

A spokesperson for Sevkavkazenergo, an electricity distribution firm, Zalina Alborova, cautioned that the outstanding debt could hurt electricity supplies to the whole North Caucasus since the power producers would be reluctant to supply electricity to the distributor in question because of the potential delay of payment.

www.rao-ees.ru/en