ATHENS – A teacher in Trikala fell victim to this year’s strange electricity bills in Greece, when the electricity in his house was cut off due to his inability to pay the amount of 3,764 euros (!), for about four months of consumption.

Greece’s Public Power Corporation (PPC) faithful to the warnings he and his family received disconnected the electricity with just 24 hours before his child was set to take the Panhellenic exams.

Despite the teacher’s calls to find a way to reconnect the electricity, the PPC officials at the local offices of the company in Trikala were relentless. The electricity was reconnected only with the intervention of the National Herald which allocated the required amount from the charity fund of the National Herald Foundation.

He is a family man (his full details are at the disposal of TNH) whose life hides a tragic story as about two years ago he lost his daughter to cystic fibrosis. And close to all this unbearable pain of losing a child, and the suffering that had preceded it, the family had to deal with the enormous financial obligations that result from such an illness – something that brought them to their knees financially.

The apartment of the three-member family is located in a typical relatively old apartment building in Trikala. Consumption, as the teacher himself told TNH, has not changed this winter compared to last year. The only thing that changed was the electricity bills, with the result that the bill of 3,764 euros (which also concerns the consumption of the previous two months – there was an outstanding balance of 2,307 euros from the previous bill) which is extremely high for a low-income teacher.

As he told TNH, the household is having a hard time making ends meet anyway since his wife is not working as in the previous years she had been dedicated to the care of his now deceased daughter who suffered from cystic fibrosis.

The teacher had appealed to the PPC officials in order to find a solution, but the latter only cut off the electricity as they had planned to do.