Евроколлаж

257 тысяч домохозяйств в Греции отключены от электопитания в связи с неплатежами:

Greece said it will turn the power back on in households where people can’t afford to pay their electric bills following the carbon monoxide death of a girl whose had turned to using a makeshift stove, and after a fire caused by a candle in another home in the same circumstances.

Officials said they will set up a vetting system to sort out those who can pay but aren’t from those who can’t afford it because of their financial circumstances, and will direct the Public Power Corporation (PPC) to not turn off the the electricity of others struggling to pay their bills.

It could be a difficult task as more than 257,000 households are now without electricity in Greece during a crushing economic crisis in which the government has imposed big pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions on the orders of international lenders, and put property tax bills in utility bills under the threat of a power cut for non-payment.

With winter setting in, households without fireplaces or electricity are turning to often dangerous ways to keep warm, including faulty stoves and braziers, raising fears of another tragedy or people going cold in the dark.

After talks with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, Environment Minister Yiannis Maniatis said he he would ask municipal authorities to provide PPC with lists of poor families, noting that the authorities would then decide on a case-by-case basis which households are genuinely unable to pay their electricity bills and ensure they have power.

"We will not allow any of our fellow citizens to die of cold,” Maniatis said.

The government’s initiative came after a fire broke out in an apartment in the Kordelio suburb of Thessaloniki as the tenants, whose power supply was cut off in May 2012, had left candles unattended.

PPC issued a statement saying that the power board had not made the decision to cut the electricity but had been asked to do so by the owner of the apartment who had complained that the tenants were not paying their bills.

In a letter to the British Medical Journal, a group of doctors and senior academics from the Medical Research Council and two leading universities said that the effect of Government policies on vulnerable people’s ability to afford food needed to be "urgently” monitored.

A surge in the number of people requiring emergency food aid, a decrease in the amount of calories consumed by British families, and a doubling of the number of malnutrition cases seen at English hospitals represent "all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” they write.

France’s unemployment rate climbed to the highest in almost 16 years in the third quarter as President Francois Hollande struggles to revive an economy that has barely grown in two years.

About 10.9 percent of the French workforce is out of a job, up from 10.8 percent in the second quarter, national statistics office Insee said today in an e-mailed statement. Excluding France’s overseas territories, the rate rose to 10.5 percent from 10.4 percent. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-05/french-unemployment-rises-to-16-year-high-as-hollande-seeks-fix.html