Franklin
Posted on 03/21/2002 11:35:40 PM PST by survivalforum.com
Moscow utility Mosenergo is threatening to cut electricity to a scientific research center that has not paid its bill in more than three years.
The problem for Mosenergo, and the research center's trump card, is that it stores strains of the most deadly diseases known to mankind.
Located in Obolensk some 90 kilometers to the south of Moscow, the State Center for Applied Microbiology has not paid the utility since October 1998 and now owes 43.5 million rubles ($1.4 million), Mosenergo spokes-woman Yulia Shagelman said Thursday.
But the center's head, Nikolai Urakov, said he cannot pay the energy bill because the funding he gets from the state budget is only 4 percent of what he needs and is only enough to maintain the main building where the laboratories are located.
The center has a "museum of strains" of anthrax, small pox and other diseases, which must be stored at certain temperatures. If the center is left without electricity, some rare strains could be lost and years of research could be wasted, Urakov said Thursday by telephone.
The research his center does is too important to pull the plug on, Urakov said. "We work to protect the country from a biological threat that has become real as never before. Nevertheless, we are being put in a position in which we can become the source of this threat," he said.
Urakov declined to elaborate on the potential dangers, but in interviews to local newspapers he has said the effects of losing electricity in the laboratories were unpredictable.
The two sides have been involved in a bitter dispute for two years.
Mosenergo has been gradually reducing electricity supplies to the center, but has never cut off power completely, Shagelman said.
But Mosenergo's patience seems to have run out. It is threatening to cut off power on Tuesday if the debt problem is not resolved.
"We have been sending warnings to them regularly, while they have repeatedly refused to let our inspectors in," Shagelman said.
"They constantly appeal to the fact that they are important and invaluable, but it does not change anything. Mosenergo has no choice but to claim the debt."
To cut power to the research center, Mosenergo's technicians need to be given access to the complex, Shagelman said. They have been blocked on previous attempts.
Utilities are often the last to be paid by poorly funded state institutions, which use their limited funds to run basic operations and pay staff, believing they are too important to be left without power.
The research center, which has 1,120 employees, receives some funding from U.S. grants, but this money cannot be used for paying utility bills, Urakov said.
He said the center plans to sell some of its property within the next month and pay the debt, but Mosenergo refuses to wait.
Shagelman, however, said that Mosenergo has repeatedly proposed discussing possible ways to restructure the debt, but the center has been unresponsive.
Carolyn
The research center, which has 1,120 employees, receives some funding from U.S. grants, but this money cannot be used for paying utility bills, Urakov said.
This same story was just on TV within the last few days. The theme was designed to impress upon us that it's so much better that US companies hire these Russian scientists to look for "peaceful" applications than to let them hire themselves out to "enemies". Now I know why the piece aired. The sheep were being prepared for the shearing.
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