Heating Welfare Cases

Those reporters who are less responsible and more exposed to the citizens' anger have been sending different news from the field. There is no heating in Belgrade schools and kindergartens. Classes are being cancelled and the parents insist that they be shortened.

Heating has not begun in Novi Sad. Most of the radiators in Nis are cold; the hospitals are no exception, since the ordered coal has not been delivered. ``We have allegedly begun heating in shifts,'' says Tihomir Ristic of the Nis Clinical Center. Pristina has no heating since the competent bodies waited for the government's decree and then, it seems, decided that there should be heating either for all or for none (including the hospital and schools). Kragujevac faces no heating problems if the apartments are connected to the Zastava power system. There will allegedly be no problems with coal if Zastava (car and weapon factory) strikes a deal with the Rembas and Pljevlja mines on who will pay for the transportation.

In short, early November has shown that the leader of the recently founded Party of Serbian Unity Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan was right when he told the people to organise their own heating. This Belgrade pastry shop owner, businessman and MP later elaborated his statement: ``Noone can secure the necessary amount of fuel. That is why everyone has to cope and secure his own heating.''

The authorities in charge of the heating have recently been surrounded by an impenetrable wall of silence. The Belgrade ElectricityDistribution Public Relations first suggested to VREME's reporter to talk with Deputy Director Vlada Djuric, who is in charge of the heating. After two days of futile attempts to contact Djuric, his secretary suggested to the reporter that he should try and contact the Marketing Director, who, it turned out, was currently on a business trip. Those in charge of the heating plants were in no mood for interviews either. There have been no comments about estimates that Belgrade has only onetenth of the amount of masut it spent on heating last winter (if one could qualify it as heating). In other words, there is just about enough fuel to get the heating going and then turn it off.

This is why the Belgrade ``opposition'' district Zvezdara after its analysis of the situation in late October concluded that its two heating plants (Mirijevo and Konjarnik) were all set to start work, but that they had just enough fuel to turn the system on and turn it off immediately. Ten times less coal has arrived than ordered, wood has still not been delivered, while the low voltage network is decrepit and lacks spare parts. Zvezdara is part of ``Belgrade's lungs,'' there is a lot of vegetation there, so many of its trees will probably be cut down. If the government's heating policy does not change, the district authorities expect that ``a large number of Zvezdara's citizens will die of hunger and cold this winter.''

On the domestic scene, the republican authorities interpret such warnings as the opposition's subversive activities. On the international scene, the messages sent by Yugoslav ambassadors are even more dismal. Just before the Sanctions Committee and UN Security Council session, Yugoslav Ambassador to the UN Dragomir Djokic wrote that half of Yugoslavia's population (i.e., more than five million people) were welfare cases, that the health care system was incapable of functioning and that ``despite alarming reports and appeals, due to the obstinate and incomprehensible attitudes of some of its members, the Sanctions Committee continued resisting all efforts to relieve the humanitarian situation and rejected all appeals for imports of gas and heating fuel... Unless the Committee and Security Council approve Yugoslavia's humanitarian requests, particularly the import of gas and heating fuel, as well as the expeditious supplies of food and medicine, there is no doubt that the lives of many of children, the elderly and the sick will be lost.''

The confidence with which the government announced the beginning of the heating season collapsed when the Sanctions Committee refused to permit the import of natural gas from Russia. The Serbian government spokesmen mentioned the government's readiness to shut down the few still working plants and use the fuel for the heating of hospitals, children's and geriatric institutions and apartments.

Until two years ago, the heating season began when the maximum average temperature during the day fell below 12 C for three days in a row. So, the heating season in Belgrade statistically lasted from October 19 to April 14, a total of 177 days. However, under a new law the heating season has been shortened by 48 days (November 8March 17).

Now, with no natural gas imports from Russia, it is most likely that the initial estimates about this winter's heating will come true the temperature in the apartments will not exceed 10 C, power will be cut off in shifts, the citizens will warm themselves by leaning against their TV screens and their patriotism. There will be exceptions, of course long before the start of the heating season, it took three days to unload the masut for the Serbian Interior Ministry Belgrade headquarters. The police are not afraid of the big bad winter.

Strip Mines, Kolubara

Traitors

``False figures about our capacities are being published for days now. They say we've got enough of everything we've got no fuel, no people, no masut, we haven't got anything we need. A few days ago our employee fell six meters because there were no light bulbs. We, who are securing between 52% and 58% of constant electricity for Serbia, electricity which does not depend on the weather, we do not have light bulbs, more precisely, we have one light bulb per 3 km and we need one every ten meters,'' says Zdravko Vucetic, Chairman of the Kolubara Independent Trade Union.

The Obrenovac thermoelectric power plant cannot work without Kolubara's coal. In order to secure power for the whole winter, Kolubara should immediately cut its capacities down by one third, which implies electricity reductions even before real winter strikes.

As time goes by, aid promised to Kolubara is not arriving, and workers are thinking of going on strike and resorting to other methods. ``It will all be very simple the greater the disparity between our salaries and the consumer basket, the less coal we dig,'' said Vucetic.