OREANDA-NEWS. January 16, 2013. Electricity supplying company Servis-Invest (DTEK Group) will be forced to cut off power supply to the production facilities and administrative buildings of OJSC “Tochmach” from 15 January 2013. Servis-Invest has to resort to such drastic measures, as Tochmash has a debt of 14.6 million hryvnias for the consumed electricity and is unwilling to continue the dialogue to find ways of repayment. Servis-Invest guarantees that this disconnection will not entail power outages for households and other consumers of Kyivskyi District of Donetsk.

 Tochmash has not been paying its electricity bills since 2008, whereas the company’s monthly consumption in winter is 500 thousand kWh, which amounts to about 350 thousand hryvnias per month.

 Furthermore, for the last three years Tochmash has failed to carry out routine repairs and major overhauls, thermal image control and maintenance of the power equipment installed on site. The electricity networks on the plant’s books are in poor technical condition. Nevertheless, Tochmash has kept using the networks, also for electricity supply to its sub-consumers.

 “We are forced to take such drastic measures, since the situation with Tochmash threatens the reliability of electricity supplies to such strategic sub-consumers as the International Airport Donetsk Sergey Prokofiev, Donetsk Railway and other facilities of Kyivskiy district of Donetsk which depend on Tochmash networks. We did our best to rectify the situation. On 23 November 2012, Servis-Invest bought out 110/6 kV substations of Tochmash to invest in reliability of the power supply to the above facilities,” said Iryna Zaporoshchenko, the Electricity Supply Director of Servis-Invest.

 “We are ready to consider Tochmash’s suggestions, both on the settlement of the outstanding debt in line with the Debt Restructuring Agreement and the payment of the current electricity bills. The effective legislation of Ukraine does not stipulate free of charge supply of electricity to the company,” said Oleg Trifonov, the General Director of Servis-Invest.