As much as the current director of the City Heating Plant in Karlovac, Inoslav Latković, strives to be principled and adhere to the Law on the Production, Distribution, and Supply of Thermal Energy (Article 23, Paragraph 1) in limiting the rights of heating service users to disconnect from the system if they wish, one of his predecessors, Ivan Mrzljak, was more pragmatic in the flexible interpretation of the application of the same, which is debatable for many.
Namely, according to the documentation released to the public by Kaportal, the Tempo restaurant of the catering business of Zlatko Petrić successfully and voluntarily separated from the Heating Plant system back in April 2007.
As part of the renovation of the Tempo restaurant within the business-residential complex on Mažuranićeva obala, which began in 2005, Petrić decided to switch to natural gas for heating the premises, which was introduced in Karlovac as part of Montcogim’s gasification, for which he obtained a valid building permit and passed all related technical inspections. Guided by this logic, Petrić simply and, without a doubt, without the knowledge and approval of the Heating Plant, disconnected from the heating system by switching to gas, and the situation began to complicate when in the spring of 2008, Petrić persistently started returning all heating bills issued to him by the Heating Plant, as he had not used that service since April 2007.
To determine the actual state of affairs on the ground, the Heating Plant sent its Technical Complaints Commission to Petrić’s restaurant as a tariff customer ‘who separated from the heating system without the necessary approvals’, referring to Article 23 of the aforementioned Law and Article 29, Paragraph 3 of the General Terms for the Supply of Thermal Energy.
However, an incredible explanation follows, which actually approves such an act by Petrić, signed by the president of the Heating Plant’s Commission, Josip Bujan, and the director of the Heating Plant, Ivan Mrzljak, which allegedly considers ignorance of regulations as justification for the committed act. Thus, Mrzljak and Bujan signed the following: ‘Following the above-mentioned facts, and assuming that you did not obtain the requested approvals solely due to ignorance of the legal regulations, the Commission, in the spirit of positively resolving your complaint, makes the following conclusion: all obligations to the Heating Plant d.o.o. until April 2007, i.e., all heating bills that you did not settle on time, up to and including March 2007, you are obliged to settle according to the issued invoices. The Heating Plant d.o.o. will not charge you for the issued bills for the period from April 2007 to March 2008, i.e., we will reduce our claims for the amount of issued invoices for the specified period, which is in accordance with the previously mentioned findings regarding your connection to gas…’ The Montcogim documentation regarding the connection of Tempo to gas was taken as a credible date for Tempo’s separation from the Heating Plant system, remaining indebted to the Heating Plant, with a statement that thereafter the Heating Plant d.o.o. would ‘remove him from the records of Heating Plant d.o.o. service users and provide a Decision on separation from the heating system.’
