Following a cold winter during which many Israeli residents, especially those in outlying communities in Judea and Samaria, suffered from frequent power outages, the director of the Israel Electric Corporation, Meir Shpigler, spoke with Israel National News and discussed the reasons for the outages and the IEC’s plans for the future.
“The complaints are entirely justified. The outages are the result of poor maintenance of the electric grid, as well as a failure to separate the grid in areas that serve Jewish residents in Judea and Samaria, from the parts situated within the Palestinian Authority. There is just one grid and we don’t actually know how much power the Palestinians use, partly because they have so many pirated electrical connections. The system needs to be upgraded so that what happened this past winter doesn’t recur. The residents of Judea and Samaria are no less important than any other residents of the country and they need to receive a quality power supply in accordance with their needs.”
Shpigler added that the mounting bill owed by the Palestinian Authority is extremely problematic for the IEC. “The debt owed by the Palestinians grows by the month and has increased significantly in recent years. It doesn’t directly impact electricity prices, but it definitely does impact our ability to provide service to Israeli residents. Since we are responsible for the consequences of this debt, we are forced to provide an inferior service, as the money is simply lacking. But collecting that debt is beyond our purview and our ability. We do believe that the sum owed should be transferred to us, whether directly or indirectly. If the government wants to tell us that right now, it has problems with collecting the debt, then that’s understandable, but it should find the money from some other source.”
Asked what he would like to improve in the company, Shpigler replied that he has many changes in mind. “We have many plans to improve the level of our service, and especially to ensure that people have the power supply they need. Currently, we are not producing enough power for the needs of the country, due to the reforms implemented in 2018 which were designed to reduce manpower within the IEC. Parallel to this, electricity consumption rose significantly, but I am not about to make our employees work like slaves.
“It pains me to hear of people cutting back on electricity, which is an essential product, due to financial constraints,” he stressed. “That’s not the way things should, or have to be. We should give discounts and help people out when they can’t afford the costs. That’s why we established a special fund of 15 million shekels for extreme cases of people unable to afford to pay their electric bills. We choose these cases where we excuse the bills that have mounted. No one in the State of Israel should have to suffer in the cold of winter or the heat of summer.”