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Anastasia Balezdrova

The extra property tax imposed by the previous government on all properties in Greece, with the exception of churches, continues to provoke strong reactions. Many of the Greeks have already received the electricity bills including the value of the extra tax, but not many of them have rushed to pay them.

Today is the first day when the power of those consumers, who have not paid their bills because of the extra tax, is to be cut off. The management of the Greek Public Power Corporation announced, however, that the procedures would be delayed at the request of the Ministry of Finance, which would revise the imposition of the measure on poor citizens. The message of the company also states that during this period, it and private electricity companies are obliged to send orders for power cuts for those households, which have not paid the bill along with the additional tax within 40 days of its issuance.

To prevent this procedure, members of the trade union of employees at DEI occupied the company building, where the orders for the power cuts are issued. They had slogans like "We will not cut off the power of the poor, even if they send us to jail", and, "No to the taxes. Let the rich pay them." GRReporter was there and talked with the President of GENOP-DEI, Nikos Fotopoulos.

"We are here to prevent the issuance of any order for power cuts in the houses of poor, unemployed and people with low wages and pensions. How long we will stay depends on many factors, but primarily on the final position of the government. We expect and urge the government, even now, to understand how criminal the voted law is. It is not possible nowadays to use a public utility, such as electricity, as a tool for blackmailing poor and unemployed people. How could those people of no income find the money to pay? Is it possible to deprive them of the opportunity to work, therefore to exist and on top of that, to impose this tax on them and threaten them that if they do not pay it, they will have no electricity?

I hope the government will understand how antisocial the voted law is and cancel it. But regardless of the actions of deputies, we will stay here to prevent the issue of a single order for cutting the electricity. We will cancel this law in practice.

However, if such orders are issued, do you intend to take action to prevent power cuts?

Of course we do. Our struggle will have a third stage too. The first stage was 40 days ago, when we attempted to prevent electricity bills, which included the extra tax, from being sent. Then, the company management and the government had alternative solutions. They found different premises (private companies – author’s note), from where they sent the bills secretly. Today, we are here to fulfill the second phase of what we have promised: to prevent the issuance of power cut orders. They will be issued only in this building and nowhere else. Well, they will persecute us only if they send the riot forces. But even if they send the orders, we will begin the third phase, which is a battle in the streets. We will oppose any attempt to cut off the power of poor households in each city, village, neighbourhood and street with our own bodies. We will prevent any private team from doing this.
 
You have announced your intention to go on strike to protest against the sale of the company’s lignite producing enterprises.

Yes, our decision is linked to government plans to sell four lignite producing companies. We are totally against this option because we believe that it is not possible to give the property of the Greek people for a minimal amount to some so-called investors who benefit from public funds.

This decision has nothing to do with actual investment. Here we are talking about transferring property created by the efforts of the Greek people into the hands of private companies. It will not give anything to society and the unemployed. We are not talking about a real investment in which real businessmen come and invest their money, take risks and create new jobs. If things really were like that, our position would be quite different. However, here we are talking about daylight robbery and we will always impede such actions.

The government should be aware that if it insists on fulfilling its intention, it will have to bleed literally, like we suffer every day of its policy to sell the enterprises. We will wait at the entrances of mines and stations. We will be there with our families and thousands of other workers. We will confront this in a very harsh way and they have to take this into account."

The government has had to revise its position towards the unemployed and socially disadvantaged citizens after protests by municipal councils in many Greek municipalities. The whole procedure about the tax collection has been further complicated by the fact that in many of the bills, the tax was calculated based on erroneous data. Later, it became clear that in many cases, the municipal authorities had increased the size of houses in order to collect larger amounts in municipal fees instead of increasing them directly. Although the Ministry of Finance is calling on citizens to pay the entire bill, promising that the error will be corrected later, none of the consumers knows when and how they will get the money from the difference in the total amount.