‘Most of Sverdlovsk Region’s cities and towns are not prepared to face the upcoming heating season, since they owe a lot of money to the energy sector enterprises,’ the spokesperson for Sverdlovenergosbyt, the local power supplier, announced today.

The region’s communal housing services departments still haven’t paid off their debts by mid-September, with the greatest sums owed to the suppliers by the departments of Nizhniy Tagil, Pervouralsk, Artemovskiy, Tavda, Kamensk-Uralskiy, Ivdel, Serov, Krasnouralskiy, Kamyshlov, Kirovgrad, Revda, Berezovskiy, and Rezh.

According to the spokesperson for Sverdlovenergosbyt, some companies haven’t been paying for the heat and electric power delivered to them for over six month. In some municipalities, the communal housing services departments’ accumulated debts run up to an alarming 40 million RUR.