Athens News Agency: News in English, 07-07-05

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] PASOK leader slams gov't policy for PPC

[01] PASOK leader slams gov't policy for PPC

He asserted that the government had taken over the PPC as a company with good prospects and that it was now in financial trouble.

"We are now talking about marginal situations in terms of power load, while there should be provision for tomorrow," Papandreou added, while raising an issue of energy security.

He also accused the government of talking big about making Greece an energy junction while not paying attention to the fundamentals, like electricity pylons.

PASOK's leader also stressed that his party was not opposed to cooperation with the private sector but that this must serve the public interest and not the other way round, accusing ruling New Democracy of using public utilities to "curry political clientele" and of failing to introduce rules to control private interests.

According to the chief of the PPC staff trade union GENOP-DEH, Nikos Fotopoulos, the government had failed to increase the system's installed capacity by the required amount in order to serve these private interests. He noted that there was an "unwritten rule" that the installed capacity of a power grid should be 20 percent more than the peak power load expected. During the past week this peak load had reached 10,500MW so that installed capacity should be 13,500 MW instead of the 11.649 MW that it was at present.

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