Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski said that the problem with the village of Slupcane has been overcome, and the locals have promised to begin paying their electricity bills and will stop attacking EVN Macedonia teams. Like many other majority Albanian villages, Slupcane has a very low rate of payment of electricity bills, and two days ago the villagers violently confronted teams from EVN Macedonia, even burnt car tires to send a message that they can’t go near the village.

EVN is a private company, a foreign direct investment in this country and has an obligation to deliver electric energy to every household and consumer. There is a problem with collection in the named settlement and there are illegally connected households. The Economy Ministry got in touch with the Mayor of Lipkovo and both sides say that the problem has been overcome. EVN teams will enter the village, will conduct a review of illegal connections and unpaid bills and in the future things will go on normally, as in other parts of the country, Kovacevski said.

The locals fear that EVN will install kill switches that will enable them to remotely disconnect individual households that fail to pay their bills. They prefer to have the entire village connected as a collective, which forces EVN to deliver electricity to all even if just a small number of households are actually paying their bills.