The organization “Young Barristers” welcomes the decision of the company “Kaztransgaz Tbilisi” , according to which, natural gas tariff won’t rise in price for legal entities from March 1,2015, as it has been supposed before and refers to the company, to show corporate responsibility and apologize to the society , that had experienced commercial difficulties and had implemented serious changes in their activities, due to unreasonable decisions of the company.
According to the statement of “Young Barristers”, the company has realised the risks and challenges of it’s attempts and the final decision of the company is direct result of unappeasable public campaign of the organization “Young Barristers” against increased tariff and mutual concent of non-governmenal organizations to prepare joint claim against the company.
The “Young Barristers” hadn’t signed the new contract , offered by the company and appealed to the “Kaztransgas Tbilisi” with special statement on February 5,2015 , in order to make some explanations regarding the possibility of the natural gas tariff changes. The organization has appealed other legal entities ,as well and proposed to refrain from signing the document offered by the company. It should be noted, that the “Young Barristers” had officially asked the company for the copy of old contract, however, “Kaztransgas Tbilisi ” has deliberately not sent mentioned document to the organization yet, for March1,2015. According to the informal information, the document has been lost. In accordance with these, it can be concluded, that the company intentionally creates restrictions to the legal proceedings of the organization.
The “Young Barristers” appeals to the company to repeale the new contracts, signed by certain legal entities, as , due to the less trust to the honesty of the company , high risks exist, that company continues implementation of new, increased tariff policy towards certain legal entities in accordance with new contracts signed by them.
For more information, the “Young Barristers” made public statement on February 2,2015 , that the decision of the “Kaztransgas Tbilisi” to increase service tariff of natural gas for legal entities , by defining 900 GEl for every 1000 m3 of gas, represented the gross violation of the contract concluded with it’s consumers , unilateral contract changes on behalf of the company and indicated its attempts to act dishonestly. The deal , based on special trust, should be abolished (repealed) , if it is carried out by means of abusing influence on behalf of any contracting party . In this case ,company had term agreements, imperative changes of which would seriousely undermine the interests of legal entities and thus , was directly violating consumer rights.
The “Young barristers” had also stated, that commertial interests of the “Kaztransgaz Tbilisi” was in conflict with the public interests of the society. In case of implementation of the decision of the company, non-governmental organizations would face particular difficulties due to the fact, that their income were depended on the financial parts of the grant and were pre-agreed with donors in the expenditure’s part of the budget _utility payments. We assessed , that officially stated explanation of the company, to increase gas tariff due to changes of the GEL exchange rate against US dollar, could not be regarded as the basis for unilateral termination of the contract. There was another important issue as well, that gas tariff rise in price refered only to the legal entities. Besides, how fair the new tariff policy, offered by the company could be, when “Kaztransgas Tbilisi“ was rising gas tariff for 20 %, while inflation of GEL towards US dollar ,compared with pevious years, was ranging only between 12-13 % .
