Lithuania’s parliamentary committees on September 28 ended their discussions on a proposal to fund reconstruction of Ukraine’s water supply system through an additional water tariff for Lithuanian residents. Environment Minister Simonas Gentvilas, who proposed the idea, withdrew the draft amendment.
“It would be legally difficult to implement it,” the minister said at a meeting of the parliamentary Committee on Rural Affairs on September 28.
The law would have allowed companies, with the approval of municipal councils, to add EUR 0.01 to the price of a cubic metre of water for households, and the collected additional funds would have been transferred to Ukraine.
However, Viktoras Pranckietis, the committee chairman, pointed out that more than 400,000 cubic meters of drinking water were used in Lithuania every day, meaning that around 4,000 euros would be collected.
Gentvilas told the committee that the proposal came from the Lithuanian Association of Water Suppliers, which united 54 municipal water suppliers.
However, Vandens Jega, an association of the country’s three largest water suppliers – Vilniaus Vandenys (Vilnius Waters), Kauno Vandenys (Kaunas Waters) and Klaipedos Vandenys (Klaipeda Waters), – was against the idea. (LRT/Business World Magazine)