It is difficult to receive monthly bills. The finding is worrying for the director of a nursing home in Hainaut. Since the end of June, its 2021 budget has been exceeded. For gas, for example, last year, bills reached 25,000 euros. From January to June of this year, the amount already amounts to 29,000 euros.
“If we start with the same amounts and the same consumption for example for a month of November, December or January, where we have a consumption which is multiplied by three, for electricity we will arrive close to a bill of 15,000 euros for 66 residents. And for the gas, we’ll see. The count is in May. We cross fingers”, confie Alexandre Dobbelaere.
Nursing homes are being hit hard by the rise in prices and in particular those of energy, while they are required to maintain a temperature of 22° in the rooms of their residents. “The elderly are vulnerable people who generally get cold faster. The establishment must therefore have a correct temperature. We are not going to force them to carry around with big sweaters and mittens in the building”, emphasizes the director.
The president of Femarbel, the federation of nursing homes in Belgium, has also sent a letter to Prime Minister Alexander De Croo to request support measures, he said Thursday in the pages of the DH. “Nursing homes welcome a vulnerable public, often financially too, which does not allow them to pass on all of the increase in energy costs to their residents. Today, many establishments tell us that they will not be able to face the winter and some managers are already contemplating purely and simply ceasing their activities in the absence of a very short-term outlook.The current inflation of energy costs combined with other factors of crisis, including the shortage of staff, compromise any possibility of recovery for many establishments”, alert Vincent Frédéricq.
In its letter to the Prime Minister, the federation calls in particular for the extension to companies of the reduction in VAT on electricity and the implementation of urgent measures to help communities in charge of vulnerable people. It also calls for the extension of the social tariff to residents of nursing homes. Femarbel is also calling for a reduction (or even the temporary abolition) of the taxes included in the energy bill and the reduction to a minimum of the fixed part of the bill.