Economy Minister Kreshnik Bekteshi gave assurances to EVN Macedonia that the inhabitants of the village of Slupcane, near Kumanovo, will stop attacking their crews who are trying to repair damage to the distribution network, but also install mechanisms to cut supply to households who don’t pay their bills. Dramatic scenes unfolded on Wednesday evening, when the inhabitants of the village burned car tires and threatened EVN workers who tried to enter the village.

The defect in Slupcane will be repaired soon, after the assurances received by the Minister of Economy Kreshnik Bekteshi, who together with the Mayor of Lipkovo agreed with the residents not to prevent the electricity distribution crews from working and starting the project for network reconstruction and installation of new measurement systems – that will enable accurate measurement of electricity, said EVN Macedonia.

Before the incident, as informed by EVN, in the late hours of yesterday, people from Slupcane forcibly and illegally opened a large energy facility belonging to the electricity distribution company in an attempt to restore the electricity supply to the village by themselves, leaving the residents of the neighboring villages, Orizare, Vaksince and Lojane without electricity. Refusal to pay electricity bills is a rampant problem in Macedonia, especially in the majority Albanian rural areas, and Albanian political parties use their clout in Government to delay the resolving of this issue.