As water customers in Loulé continue their battle with Inframoura over what they claim are outrageous water charge increases, the relatively poor residents of Olhão now have found out what the recently announced water charges will be for 2015, and customers are furious.
With basic domestic water charges in Olhão rising 32% and commercial basic usage charges rising 46% it is no wonder that many customers are at their wits end and have sharply criticised the new charges imposed by mayor António Pina.
The mayor’s political opposition also has wasted no time in slamming the price hikes at council water supply offshoot AmbiOlhão.
António Pina has authorised the price rise so as to reduce the €2.2 million support payment made by the council to AmbiOlhão each year to cover its trading losses.
Pina of course also is chairman of AmbiOlhão and in this role could rightly be said to have failed to run the council’s water supply service at anywhere near break-even.
In fact AmbiOlhão owes Aguas do Algarve many millions for water it has sold on to consumers but has not yet paid for.
The local Communists councillors have said the rises are abhorrent with much of the council’s population already struggling to get by on low incomes and ever rising utility costs.
The €1 million extra revenue expected from the across-the-board rises will redcue the support grant from the council but with the water company making regular losses, the financial problems will not go away as the water consumer also is the ratepayer and ends up footing the bill for incompetence one way or another.
A notification from the mayor slipped in to recent water bills mentioned an increase in charges but failed to detail the scale of the price hikes which now have left many on low incomes in shock.
In fact the note from the mayor tried to blame the water charge increases on the water and waste regulatory body which wants water charges to be evened out across the various Algarve councils.
Now that the new charges have been revealed the scale of the problem has become evident, i.e that the water company is so badly run that it manages to lose money despite minimal investment, high prices, failure to pay its supplier, and its monopoly position.
Simply hiking charges every time the water company makes a loss is not the answer and the inability of AmbiOlhão to run a business-like local service explains the mayor's rejection of Aguas do Algarve’s plan to take over the supply to consumers in exchange for local plant, equipment and the supply network.
Opposition party members opposed the creation of AmbiOlhão in the first place, sensing just this sort of scenario where the ratepayer foots the bill for the incompetence of a loss making subsidiary which has zero incentive to perform.
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