Appeals Court Orders Azersu to Answer Turan IA�s Question

Baku / 18.04.17 / Turan: The Baku Court of Appeal chaired by Valeh Agayev on April 18 obliged the state water distribution company Azersu OJSC to provide an exhaustive response to the information request of the Turan Information Agency, which was initiated on August 30, 2016.

The defendant is given time until May 2, when the next trial will take place.

During this time, nine trials were held in the First Administrative and Economic Court of the city of Baku, which allowed getting answers to six of the seven questions of the request for the purchase and installation of water meters in the amount of 12 million manat.

The last question, which has not been answered so far, concerns the cost of the estimate of the installation of meters.

The law “On freedom of information” requires the defendant to respond within 7 business days.

The information inquiry was sent after it became known that Azersu bought meters at high prices for the funds allocated by the presidential order on March 29, 2016.

The agency believes that the price of meters and installation work is overestimated by 5-10 times. Thus, with the allocated 12 million AZN, Azersu bought 50.000 meters for 5.5 million manat, and another 6.5 million AZN is planned to be spent on construction works. It should also be noted that Azersu has broken the three-year state program on the 100% installation of meters in the country in 2006-2009.

The company reported that by January 1, 2017 for 1,342,248 subscribers of the "population" category 897,350 or 66.9% of the meters were installed.  For another 58,775 subscribers of the “non-population” group 48,223 meters, or 82% were installed.

It is strange that after the completion of the state program Azersu regularly received new funds for the installation of meters, while none of the controlling state bodies inquired about the irrational (to put it mildly) use of these funds. —0--