Azeri Reporter Recalls Utility Nightmare

Thursday, 3 June, 2010

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Leyla Leysan

I was working in the office when my mother called to say the electricity had been turned off. I did not know it, but her call marked the start of a journey through Azerbaijan’s bureaucracy the like of which I had never known.

Like many Baku families, we have a little house in the countryside outside the city where we retreat from the heat in the summer months.

Until this winter, a man from the electricity company came round every year and took 15-20 manats (20-25 US dollars) from us to pay for the tiny amount of electricity we had used over the previous 12 months.

The owner of a neighbouring dacha, as these little country houses are called, rang us in January to say that electricity meters were being installed. Just two months later, our neighbour rang again to say that our power had been cut off.

“In order to re-connect the electricity, they are demanding that we pay a debt of 1,200 manats (1,500 dollars),” my mother said in a shocked voice.

My mother and I could not imagine where this debt had come from. It would be an extravagant sum to have to pay for a large flat in the city, and we are only at the dacha for six weeks of the year.

For help, I appealed to a contact: Tanriverdi Mustafaev, head of the press department at the Baku Electric Network. He said we had been charged for having underpaid 22 manats a month, which was more than we previously paid for a whole year.

“But how can that be? We barely live in this house, and the sum is excessive,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “They will disconnect the meter and re-calculate the sum, based on the average user of energy. Come to our central office, and we’ll sort it out.”

I took his advice, but struggled to get past the guards at the door, and again at every floor of the building.

Despite the guards, I eventually entered the office of Alekper Aliev, head of the department for electricity sales, to whom I had been directed by Mustafaev.

“You have a large debt. Here is the detail of our account, where it says that for some years you have not paid for electricity,” Aliev said, after examining the papers I gave him.

Shocked, I told him that we, like our neighbours, had every year paid the people who come round to collect the money owed to the electricity company.

“What do you mean you ‘paid the people’? You shouldn’t give anything to anyone, do you have receipts?” he replied, directing me to take my case to the office in Mashtagi, a little town near our dacha, where the local representatives might be able to deal with the paperwork.

Exhausted by my encounter, I returned to my office and decided to try a different tactic. I rang Eyyub Huseynov, head of the Union of Free Consumers, who told me that he received complaints like mine almost every day.

He claimed letters were regularly sent not just to demand dubious unpaid electricity bills, but also charges for water and gas.

Referring to cases such as mine, he said, “This is an illegal halt to the provision of a service. There have even been cases where inspectors have themselves removed the seal from the meter, and then demanded the customers pay a fine. The utility authorities need to check the behaviour of their employees more closely, and take responsibility for them.”

He said a court case was the only way to establish our rights, “I can say that we have won 100 per cent of the court cases we have initiated against the Baku Electric Network.

“Sadly, people are not informed of their rights, and therefore cannot defend them. At the moment, we are preparing a book, which would let consumers know their rights, and which will be distributed free. I hope this, if only a bit, will help in the fight against injustice.”

According to Mustafaev, each allegation of illegal behaviour by the company is fully investigated. He said the company would only cut off electricity if the customer had not paid their debts, which meant it could not be counted as “illegal halt to the provision of a service”.

“It is possible that some people have had one-off cases when dishonest inspectors demanded money from the consumers. In such a case, it is important to address each specific case and punish the corrupt in court,” he said.

Huseynov said that we could try to take the company to court but advised that we attempt other approaches first, since a court case would require us to gather together every last bit of documentation. The process would probably last three months, he said, and would require us regularly visiting the courts and missing work.

My neighbour at the dacha, Sadikh Hasanov, whose power had also been turned off, had a similarly low opinion of the court process.

“Yes, you can resist them, but with what resources?” he said.

“In order to get the debt recalculated, I have had to spend day and night in the office in Mashtagi.”

It seemed that the best thing was for me to go to Mashtagi, even though I realised getting the debt recalculated could prove expensive. In the regional office, I met Vuqar Ahmed, head of the Commission for Resolving Debt Questions. He said that an average sum recorded on the meter was extrapolated out to 12 months, and then multiplied by the number of years for which we had supposedly not paid our bill.

I was about to explain to him why this was wrong when Hasan Ibrahimov, head of the Balance and Shortage Department at the office, broke in to inform me that it would cost me 200 manats before the commission would even begin to investigate my case. I was stunned.

“As far as I understand the commission exists to uncover how much money we have to pay for the last few years, so why do we have to pay in order to find out how much we have to pay?” I asked, but received no satisfactory answer.

I returned to the office, and wondered how long it would be before I discovered how much money we owed. My neighbour Hasanov had managed to resolve his problem in just three months, so I rang back Ibrahimov to ask if it would be the same for us.

“I wanted to help you by doing the work in three months, but since you have decided to write an article about it, the commission will deliberate for a year,” he said.

Leyla Leysan is an IWPR contributor, and a member of the Cross Caucasus Journalism Network.