Energy, Latvia, Legislation, Pensioners

The federation’s president, Andris Silins, told LETA that a number of low-income pensioners had shared with the federation their concerns about growing electricity costs from July this year when a fixed component or the connection charge was to be added to the electricity distribution tariff.

So far customers have been paying to Sadales Tikls, the electric power distribution subsidiary of the state-owned electricity utility Latvenergo, only for the amount of electricity consumed but the Latvian Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (SPRK) in early May approved inclusion of a fixed component in the electricity distribution tariff of Sadales Tikls. The company said it wanted customers to pay the connection charge because over 100,000 power connections in Latvia consumed little and at times no electricity at all but Sadales Tikls still incurred costs for maintenance of the relevant infrastructure. For households with average electricity consumption, the new tariff will not be higher than the current tariff but electricity bills will increase for households spending little or no electricity at all.

The Federation of Pensioners said that low-income pensioners trying to economize on electricity costs would suffer because the connection charge would increase their electricity bills by few euros, further reducing the amounts they could spend from their meagre pensions on food and medicines.

Socially sensitive issues must be addressed in a socially responsible manner, and discrimination against the poorest social groups in inadmissible, the federation said, urging the prime minister to come up with a compensatory mechanism to compensate low-income pensioners for the rising cost of electricity.

The prime minister said that the Cabinet regulations were being drafted which would deal with the pensioners’ concerns about higher electricity costs.