The need to exploit the holiday period[/B] for dialogue in order to reach a conclusion on the issues that concern the workers of AHK, expressed the President of EPOPAI Kyriakos Tafounas, after the decision by the Authority's guilds to suspend the strike measures following the extraordinary meeting held on Tuesday by Minister of Labour and Social Insurance Kyriakos Kousios with the guilds.
In statements to the Cyprus News Agency, Mr. Tafounas said that the Minister of Labour and Social Insurance "took the initiative and invited us to a meeting where we informed him about the issues that concern us and as a representative of the state he undertook to arrange next week meetings with the Ministries of Finance and Energy involved while he requested some time because some days he will be absent abroad".
He said that "we probably won't end up next week, bearing in mind other commitments that the Labour Minister has but we certainly didn't leave it open that it will take too much time."
"It's an opportunity to take advantage of the holiday season to come to a conclusion and not have to revisit the measures," he said, adding that we always "respect holiday seasons."
He added that for the employees of AHK "electricity is still an essential service even if we turned it into a financial commodity" and "it is our obligation to intervene for the benefit of consumers".
"To date, there has been no dialogue, no approach and no goodwill to discuss anything and make decisions that are serious both for the future of the organisation and for the cost of electricity and for another serious issue that we are likely to face soon, the issue of adequacy and how to avoid possibly the total shutdown of the system with decisions that are taken without technical documentation and that may lead us to go to unpleasant situations for the economy and the country, "he added.
In response to a question on the issue of adequacy, Mr. Tafounas said that in 2021 the Chairman of RAEK announced that in 2024 we will have a need for additional conventional generation of 650 megawatts and questioned where these 650 were installed, "when the plans and the condition imposed on the Authority to allow it to be active in renewables is a simultaneous withdrawal of Dhekelia units."
"We are a small and isolated island, we have no access anywhere in terms of electricity, we have no common borders with friendly states that can help us, we are dependent on liquid fuels, and the only way to be secure in terms of sufficiency is to have tanks full of fuel and units at all times to put them into operation," he added.
The EPOPAI President said that "for 20 years we have been waiting for the arrival of natural gas, two years ago AEC was asked to make a one-time payment of 43 million euros to move forward with this infrastructure and two years later the Ministry is telling us that in order to allow you to do renewable energy you have to withdraw the generation units that we installed for natural gas."
At this point he raised several issues that create uncertainty in relation to necessary investments that need to be made, such as whether the electrical interconnection of Cyprus with neighbouring countries will take place, whether natural gas will come and added that there are licensed individuals to do conventional generation for years but "considering all that is announced it is not easy to decide to invest".
He also said that "there is a misconception that renewable energy will help us the most or it may be uncontrolled installation of renewable energy" and added that "in energy there is a balance and if I want 150 megawatts today I have to produce 150 megawatts" and "it makes no sense to produce 2.000 Megawatts from RE when my system can absorb much less and not all RE is a substitute for the need for conventional generation", as happened two weeks ago due to cloudy weather that led the Operator to switch off power from areas until we put conventional generation on line for the system to stand".
Referring to how the AEC workers arrived at the decision to strike indefinitely, the EPOPAI President said the workers raised their issues very early and before the summer vacation last summer and called on the AEC Board and the Ministries concerned to engage in dialogue, taking advantage of the vacation period, adding that "none of this happened".
He further said that the issues of their concern included staffing, unhindered access of AHK to Renewable Energy Sources, replacement of the costly Dhekelia generation units that are costing consumers, adding that these issues are positions and decisions of the Authority's Board, which forwarded them to the relevant Ministries.
"There was no such dialogue and we proceeded after the holidays with announcements and letters on these issues, saying that decisions must be taken because they have to do with the future of AHK," he said.
The EPOPAI President said that workers were forced to go on a one-hour warning work stoppage about four weeks ago and "we left time and came back with a 12-hour warning work stoppage."
"We left two more weeks to go ahead with the measures that we announced and would have been implemented today," he added."
[P TAFOUNAS TOLD THE CYPRUS NEWS AGENCY THAT "NO DIALOGUE TOOK PLACE ALL THIS TIME AND WE WERE SURPRISED TO BE INFORMED THAT OF THE APPROXIMATELY 370 NEW JOBS REQUESTED BY THE AGENCY, ALL OF WHICH IT SHOULD HAVE FILLED TODAY IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO FULFIL ITS MISSION, A SMALL NUMBER, ABOUT 146, WERE APPROVED AND FOR THE REST WE WERE REFERRED TO BUY SERVICES FROM NON-EXISTENT PRIVATE CONTRACTORS.""It is specialised the sector in which we work, AHK recruits people of specific specialisation and qualifications and the acquisition of the experience and knowledge to work in the organisation is acquired through their work in the organisation," he said, adding "for someone to be able to get the necessary certificates, depending on the level they work it starts from 1 to 3 years."
Tafunas said that "it was ironic and humiliating for us to be referred to buy services supposedly from private contractors who have this expertise, in addition to the fact that it is not legitimate for permanent needs of the agency to buy services." adding that "in the past we bought services from private contractors to lay some power lines and with the first rain the poles fell on people's crops."
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