April 24, 2024

Athens News

News in English from Greece

Put out the lights, citizens.

Utility costs have reached an unthinkable limit. Many tenants, trying to save money, even unscrew the light bulbs in apartment buildings in order to pay less in the end.

The increase in gas, oil and electricity prices has skyrocketed and most people can no longer afford to pay exorbitant utility bills.

Residents of apartment buildings receive bills that chill the blood in their veins. For example, writes in.gr, in an apartment building in Athens, the previous bill of 888 euros, with the same use of electricity, has now increased to 2127 euros. As for heating oil, last year 700 liters at 0.96 € cost the house 672 euros, and this year 800 liters at 1.295 euros per liter will have to pay 1036 euros. That is, this apartment building, which paid 1777 euros for utilities, will pay 3647 €. “It will be even worse in March,” says a utility worker.

Rising prices for everything and everything goes beyond even the most pessimistic scenarios, when tenants of apartment buildings receive “furious” utility bills, not only compared to last year, but even to last month! “In the apartment building where I live, we paid 2,000 euros for central heating with natural gas last year and 5,000 euros this year,” says the head of the communal department.

Many apartment buildings also have tenants who are unable to pay (kinochristo) and transfer this responsibility to the owners of the apartment. At the same time, while claiming that there are few utilities and they are of crappy quality (the elevator often does not work, the stairs are dirty), and the owners, for their part, clarify that the utilities associated with the use of the apartment are legally paid by the tenant. However, there are problems in multi-apartment buildings that concern only homeowners.

extreme situations

Stavrula Brettu, apartment building manager, says tenants are often late in paying their utility bills, and the reserve is low, and managers often have to shell out money from their own pockets to meet their obligations. The inability to pay utility bills leads to extreme situations: an apartment building that could not collect utilities was left without an elevator.

Maria Kop, an employee of a utility company, says that in an apartment building where the elevator was disabled for non-payment, a seriously ill man had to be carried in his arms so that he could get to the hospital for another life-saving procedure (hemodialysis).

In another case, in the entrance, the residents themselves unscrewed all the bulbs (they say, there’s nothing to burn the light for nothing) and left only one (which the outcasts immediately discovered and settled (in the dark, but not offended).

The country’s economy is going to extremes, as techs say the oil shortage is causing even more damage. Georigos Gelbouras, a heating technician, says that the heating boilers that are installed in apartment buildings often break down, leak, and are rarely serviced, which is unsafe.

In general, the tenants of apartment buildings now have to rely only on the imminent arrival of spring, when the air temperature rises and there is no need for heating. Although… how about a hot summer without air conditioning?



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