Latest reports indicate that, more than 48 hours after the first rainstorm of Israel's winter, about 8,000 homes are still without power this morning. The outages are mainly in the Sharon towns of Netanya, Ra'anana and Kfar Sava and neighboring communities. Tens of thousands of families in these areas have been reconnected in the past few hours, but some are considering a class action over the damage suffered.
Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) (TASE: ELEC.B22) CEO Ofer Bloch, appearing before the Knesset State Control Committee this morning, said that customers would not be compensated because the breakdowns stemmed from force majeure. He did not comment on sanctions by IEC workers and the Labor Court hearing yesterday in which the workers were ordered to work in emergency format for 72 hours. "We have no authority to enter yards of buildings to cut back trees, and that makes it difficult to repair breakdowns," Bloch said.
While the CEO blames the trees, IEC chairman Yiftah Ron-Tal blames the Ministry of Finance. He said that because the ministry had objected to a raise in electricity tariffs, the company had insufficient money to improve infrastructures. In a session of the Reforms Committee in the Knesset today, Ron-Tal said, "The incident is the symptom and not the problem, which is far greater and far worse. The infrastructures that collapsed are from 2002, and you Udi (Udi Adiri, the Ministry of Finance representative at the hearing, H.C.) are directly responsible for that, because you would not help raise tariffs."
In response, Adiri said, "The labor dispute at IEC on Sunday was long and caused substantial damage. The company did not report this to anyone, and turned to the court at a late hour."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 27, 2015
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