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Housing maintenance authorities in Minsk are struggling to recover debts owed by tenants failing to pay for housing maintenance and utility bills, BelaPAN reports.
On July 28, the authorities tried a new measure. Two apartments of a house on Karbysheva Street where hot water, electricity and natural gas supplies were cut off a long time ago had their sewage pipes disconnected. Several apartments of a newly built house on Independence Avenue suffered the same punishment on August 10. The house is half empty, but it already has tenants with outstanding bills.
A woman living in the house on Independence Avenue told a BelaPAN correspondent that she thought that the new measure was a poor solution to the problem. “Some debtors will come to senses, but others won’t and their neighbors alone will suffer,” she says.
Iryna Kupreychyk, head of a housing maintenance organization in Minsk’s Pershamayski district, says that defaulting tenants were given five days on August 3 to settle their debts, but many of them failed to comply.
“We have a great number of tenants who have to pay outstanding bills for one month or two,” she said.
Only two housing maintenance organizations in the city went as far as to disconnect sewage pipes to the apartments of non-payers. But Ms. Kupreychyk warns that more debtors will face the punishment very soon.