Social accountants fail: only 108 in four years

BarcelonaTwo social meters every week. In just over four years, only 108 in all of Catalonia, according to the company Endesa. The solution to prevent vulnerable families from losing electricity due to their inability to pay has been a failure, as an estimated one million people suffer. energy poverty, approximately 20% of the population.

With the extreme heat waves that are so recurrent In recent years, families who are struggling to make ends meet not only struggle to pay their heating bills in winter, but also find it impossible to maintain adequate temperatures during the long summer months. One of the objectives of the measure was to ensure that families would not lose power or tap into other meters, a situation that occurs especially among those who occupy a home without the owner's permission.

The entity Alliance Against Energy Poverty (APE) has presented a manifesto, with the support of more than fifty entities, to demand that the Generalitat (Catalan Government) unblock the installation of social electricity meters, an initiative born from the agreement signed in March 2021 between the Catalan government and Endesa to forgive the debt of families with a social vulnerability report. In the first two years, 48 meters were installed, and in the following two, the other sixty, reaching 108. For APE activists, the excessive bureaucracy imposed by the electricity company is responsible for so few beneficiaries. On the contrary, Endesa defends itself by arguing that they are always installed at the request of users. "We ask the Generalitat (Catalan Government) to actively involve itself, to find the legal or technical formula that will allow this situation to be unblocked," claims Josep Babot, spokesperson for APE, during a protest event in Plaça Sant Jaume in Barcelona.

The manifesto has already been signed by 55 entities from different fields: the housing movement, neighborhood associations, social and energy entities, and several firefighter unions, who warn of the real risks of not installing electricity meters. The text's promoters highlight Endesa's lack of will and point out that, in the same four years, a thousand water meters have been installed to guarantee water supply.

Furthermore, the debt forgiveness agreement ends this year, and at this time, it has not even been announced that both parties—the Government and Endesa—are negotiating its terms. Nor have other energy companies with clients in Catalonia managed to join the initiative, which has saved more than 60,000 Catalan families.