The regional consumer protection organization responded this morning with a statement to the media regarding the City Heating Plant’s announcement of a lawsuit claiming that ROZP ‘openly calls for public violence’, and that its president, Željko Tomašić, is fighting for his own benefit, namely, the forgiveness of debt for the heating season – stating that ROZP fights on behalf of 46,000 residents of Karlovac who are tired of the torture known as ‘public services’.
ROZP emphasizes that they are particularly fighting on behalf of a thousand individuals who could become homeless due to debts and forced collections, as well as on behalf of over a million consumers in Croatia ‘who are forced to use the services of various heating plants’.
In a personal but also generally applicable example, the president of ROZP, Željko Tomašić, explains that he ‘properly submitted written complaints within the appeal period’ regarding the accounts of the City Heating Plant, to which the City Heating Plant responded that it does not accept these complaints, prompting him to appeal to the Consumer Complaints Commission of the City Heating Plant.
– I have never received, nor have I refused to receive, the decision of the Consumer Complaints Commission, and since more than 120 days have passed since the first complaint to the Commission, I consider the complaint accepted, and therefore there is no legal basis for initiating enforcement on that account. There has been no response or statement from the City Heating Plant regarding my other accounts either. Therefore, since more than eight days have passed, these objections are considered valid and accepted, and thus there is also no basis for enforcement, Tomašić believes.
The ROZP statement repeatedly uses this opportunity to clarify its interpretation that the operations of the City Heating Plant are illegal, and publicly requests the publication of the Plan with which this newly established company, formed from the ruins of the previous Heating Plant in bankruptcy, received the concession for providing the public service of thermal energy distribution in Karlovac. This call insists on the publication of the date of the announced tender for the relevant concession, in accordance with the Concession Act, which should have gone to tender!
Citing the Consumer Protection Act, the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, and the Resolutions of the European Commission and the UN, ROZP reiterates that ‘the right to choose is a constitutional right of every citizen of the Republic of Croatia’, and that the City Heating Plant is attempting to deny this right to the residents of Karlovac.
– We have been fighting for a fair way of receiving and paying for the delivered energy for two years and do not accept that someone can violate the constitutional principles of the Republic of Croatia, nor do we accept that someone interprets for us, outside the Constitution, what kind of state we wanted while fighting for its independence and sovereignty, and that those responsible for the bankruptcy of the Heating Plant tell us what is in the interest of consumers, concludes the statement signed by the president of ‘ROZP’, Željko Tomašić, who is also the Secretary General of the Croatian Association of Consumer Protection Organizations ‘Consumer’.
A new wave of mutual public accusations began last week when enforcement proceedings were initiated against seventy consumers, most of whom have requested in writing to be excluded from the city heating system. Civil society organizations in Karlovac refer to the Consumer Protection Act (Article 54), which states that ‘it is not permitted to deliver a product or provide a service to a consumer that the consumer has not ordered in advance, if it is a chargeable transaction, and if the trader does so, it is considered a promotional gift from the trader.’
