Socialists: the public gas supplier cannot temporarily “steal” its customers’ money

The opposition Socialist Party has submitted a bill aimed at making state owned gas and electricity provider MVM introduce a new practice of “fair and honest” invoicing to prevent the company from “using customers’ money without paying them an interest”.

Socialist group leader Bertalan Tóth said on Facebook on Monday that MVM routinely charged customers “unrealistically high” amounts for gas, a “trick to use their money for months”.

According to the opposition politician, the situation today is that if you use gas for cooking, heating, or water heating, chances are that your money is being used for free by the “Fidesz state” for months, as MVM regularly sends out unrealistically high gas bills to its customers.

Overbilling is a ploy by the state-owned MVM to use consumers’ money for months without interest, he said, adding that the MSZP believes that this is a way of harming gas-consuming families, as with the current record high inflation it makes a difference whose account the money is on.

Tóth quoted Energy Minister Csaba Lantos as indicating earlier that the government would not change the billing system until 2025, and slammed the government for the distant date whereas “it took but a few days to grant ministers and state secretaries a pay hike worth millions of forints”.

As we wrote earlier, Hungarian baths see huge ticket price increase.