Saturday, 11 February 2012Montenegrins are still angry with last month's electricity price hikes, and plan to again take to the streets to show their dissatisfaction with the government's inattention towards their demands.
Organisers announced they will hold a protest in Bijelo Polje on Friday (February 10th) and in Podgorica a week later.
After electricity prices rose by 6.7%, 10,000 protesters from around the country demonstrated on January 21st.
Pero Vuckovic, deputy director of the state institution that determines the price of electricity, Agency for Energetics of Montenegro, RAE, said that an increase in prices over then next few years will be offset by service fee reductions.
"The current price of one megawatt in Montenegro is 34 euros. It is planned that in the next eight years this price [will] increase by 5% [annually]. On the other hand, some services that citizens are paying now will be reduced or disappear, so that the total cost of electricity for regular consumers will be increased very little," Vuckovic told SETimes.
He noted that the price of electricity in the past three years in Montenegro has consistently fallen, and added that only the RAE can regulate electricity prices.
“Not the prime minister, not the government," Vuckovis said.
The government announced that it will allocate more money to subsidise electricity for the most vulnerable sectors of the population and will probably expand the list of those who will receive help to pay the bills.
Currently, the government subsidises about 15,000 citizens at a cost of about 1m euros.
Despite the explanations, it seems that people are determined to show their disappointment.
Podgorica citizen Stevan Vukcevic, 28, attended the January protests, and says he will go to the rallies this month.
"If electricity becomes more expensive, we will organise more protests. This is the only [response] that people can give to the price increases. In this country everything is more expensive every day. Only the wage decreases," Vukcevic told SETimes.
Ognjen Jovovic, president of the student organisation of faculty in Niksic and one of the protest organisers, told SETimes that they plan to expand their list of requests.
"We will demand from the government to examine all suspicious privatisations of former Montenegrin enterprises. The government of Montenegro is devastating this country -- if we don't stand in their way, we have no future in this country," Jovovic said.
Last month, protest organisers said that they will demand the dismissal of the government if it does not fulfill their demands.
Prime Minister Igor Luksic suggested that protest organisers set up a political party because, he said, that message crossed the line from civilian to political.
But, organizers claims that they don't have political ambitions.
"We simply want to show that each power should be controlled by the people," Vanja Calovic, head of the Network for Affirmation of the Civil Sector NGO told SETimes.
Political analyst Dritan Abazovic, a member of the NGO Forum 2010, said that the government wants to paint the protests with political colors in order to minimise their significance.
"They use some of their old methods. For example, that it is not good for European integration and similar phrases. The fact is that the government has not taken any action last year to improve the standard of living. The economic situation is very complex and I think that the next protests will be more forceful," Abazovic told SETimes.
The average monthly salary in Montenegro is 475 euros. At 1.25 billion euros, or 45% of GDP, Montenegro's projected total debt is second only to Albania in the region. |
Saturday, 11 February 2012
Setimes
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