The crisis of heating in Chisinau apartments seems not to leave the majority of inhabitants of the capital city, local politicians, and foreign donors indifferent.

Many people outside Chisinau shrug their shoulders when they hear about these problems. In the other city that still has centralized heating - Balti, for instance, the tariff 40% higher than in Chisinau has been applied for 3 months already and there are no problems of this kind.

The rest of the country has to heat their dwellings on their own. Some of them have installed autonomous heating systems using gas or firewood right in their apartments, others use coal or firewood to make fire in the stove, but most of people use pressed dung and brushwood.

Most people say that heating expenses are high, very high. An average rural family, for instance, needs about two tons of coal and 8-10 m3 of firewood for one winter. The cost of these resources makes up about 7-8 thousand lei. People complain that it is too much, but they have no choice if they do not want to freeze.

In Chisinau, however, we have got used to low tariffs and high subventions from municipal authorities. One may have the impression that socialism has come back to Chisinau and communism is very near. Besides, salaries are at least 2-3 times higher in Chisinau than in villages and raion centers.

Some of our relatives from rural areas are surprised that one can live in Chisinau in a 3-room apartment and spend only 1.5-2 thousand lei for heating in winter. Well, this is at least what I had to pay last year. In fact, the winter was warm, too.

According to certain estimates, expenses are likely to increase thrice this season. The difference is obvious. However, according to how things are going, cheap heating gets more expensive for us because of the Termocom, Moldovagaz, City Hall, Government and foreign donors.

It is expensive for us because we do not have heating at the beginning of winter. The chances to have heating get even smaller as representatives of Termocom declare that the blocks with debts will not be connected. In our block, there are people who have debts of 7-8 thousand lei and these are debts that have accumulated only within the last 4 years, since we have direct contractual relations with Termocom. The situation in other blocks is even worse, because there are people whose debts exceed 20 thousand lei and they have no intention to pay them back whatsoever. Why has Termocom given them heating instead of disconnecting is still an enigma.

Nothing is new. We have been through this already. Four years ago in November, Moldovagaz reduced gas delivery to Termocom and CHP and our block was connected to heating at the beginning of December. As a result, we used an electric heating device to heat one room and spent 3 times more for electricity than we would have paid for heating. This is what happens now.

In this situation, people try to find those at fault. And their number is quite big. For instance, we can easily say that external donors are to blame. At the end of 2006, the International Monetary Fund signed a memorandum with the Government on funding conditions for the Republic of Moldova. According to the commitments undertaken by the authorities, they were supposed to start gradual adjustment of tariffs for thermal energy beginning with December 2006, so that they reached their real value by the beginning of 2008. According to IMF estimates, the tariff of 233 lei/Gcal applied at that moment covered only 55% of the real cost of heating in Chisinau. The same estimates showed that at the beginning of 2008, the Giga-calorie had to cost about 700 lei, which is 3 times higher.

In order to accelerate adjustment of tariffs and exclude political implications, legislation was to be amended so that heating tariffs in Chisinau were adopted by the National Agency for Energy Regulation. At the end of 2006, the Parliament examined a draft law in this regard, but decided that tariffs should be continually approved by the Municipal Council, and NAER was supposed to develop and adopt the Methodology for Calculation of Tariffs for Thermal Energy. Two years have passed since, but we still have not seen any declaration of the IMF that would require Moldovan authorities to honor their commitments.

The Government also undertook to allocate additional budgetary funds to compensate for the costs related to this increase for public institutions and protect vulnerable categories of population maintaining the corresponding budgetary deficit at the same time. "We firmly assure you that the poorest social categories shall be protected against the effects of energy price increase, including by providing nominal compensations and tariffs for minimum consumption", claimed the Government in the Memorandum signed with the IMF.

The Government also promised that starting with 2008 they would introduce a new social assistance system, which did not happen. We can mention that in 2006 an IMF Policy Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) mission declared that about 80% of the poorest families did not receive any compensations, while about 55% of assistance was received by families with high incomes. The current Government, however, denies any responsibility for this situation and says that it can do nothing to help Chisinau.

Local authorities also share a part of the blame, because they take populist decisions that are far from reality in many regards. The issue of tariff and subventions has raised so much fuss and time wasting. Finally, the City Hall has paid and will continue to pay all the amounts requested by Termocom.

Now local counselors boast of having adopted regulations that will allow the poorest categories to benefit from subventions. If we take into account the fact that the threshold to benefit from the subvention is 1,400 lei per person, many of those who receive legal salaries from the budget will be excluded from the list of beneficiaries, while those who work in constructions, dentistry, trade and other sectors with a great share of unofficial payments will be able to benefit from these subventions. Moreover, what is the use of these regulations, if we are not going to have heating in our apartments anyway?

As for the value of tariff, I think it cannot be lower than in Balti, where it amounts to 786 lei/Gcal. We must take into account that Balti inhabitants have been paying 30% more for heating than Chisinau inhabitants for 6 years now and their tariffs have been permanently adjusted close to their real value.

Behind the dispute on the value of tariffs, there is the phantom of parliamentary elections, and a heating bill that is 3 times higher means huge losses of electorate for certain parties. This is also going to be the case if blocks continue staying without heating.