The north’s electricity authority Kib-Tek has the right to cancel its 15-year procurement contract with Turkish energy company Aksa over contract breaches with regard to the planned subsea electricity cable which would connect Cyprus to Turkey, Kib-Tek workers’ union El-Sen’s former chairman Tuluy Kalyoncu said on Wednesday.

Kalyoncu said Aksa was bound by the contract to prepare a feasibility report for the cable within a year of the contract’s coming into force on August 1 last year and present it to Kib-Tek.

However, he said, with 55 days now having passed since August 1 this year, “Aksa has not been able to submit the report it promised!

He then added that Article 20.3 of the contract gives Kib-Tek the right to terminate the contract in full if Aksa does not meet its obligations under the contract, and then said some people were “looking for a method to terminate the contract but could not find one, so I thought I would bring this to your attention.”

The contract was the third procurement deal Kib-Tek had signed with Aksa and had bound them to purchase the energy produced at the Kalecik power plant near the village of Gastria, which is owned and operated by Aksa, until 2038, and to pay for it in US dollars.

Aksa were supposed to increase Kalecik’s capacity by a total of 35 megawatts, bringing the plant’s total capacity to 188 megawatts, though this issue was one of many controversies linked to the deal, with it having been claimed that a “new” electricity generator delivered by Aksa to Kalecik in January was actually 25 years old.

El-Sen’s current leader Ahmet Tugcu described the contract as a “betrayal” a year ago, and the feeling of unfairness in some quarters was heightened when Cyprus Turkish Chamber of Mechanical Engineers chairman Ayer Yarkiner claimed in February that Aksa’s profits in Cyprus had exceeded $1 billion (€924 million at the time) since 2000.

The agreement for the construction of an interconnecting electricity cable was signed by Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz and the north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel in July last year, with its completion date set for 2028.

It was referred to both in the text of the Aksa contract and the words of Aksa chairman Cemil Kazanci after it was signed, with Aksa having been given exclusive rights to operate it.

He had said at the time that “quick steps” would be taken to bring the cable to fruition, and that “we will put Aksa’s signature on the cable, which has been a dream for years in the TRNC”.

Vice President Yilmaz was still optimistic regarding the cable’s future when he visited Cyprus in September, saying it will “solve [the north’s] energy problem completely”, though the initially devised timetable with its completion date of 2028 has not been publicly mentioned since December last year.

This timetable was based on the planning phase having finished and construction having begun in 2024.

With the cable project still not having gotten off the ground,tThe issue of energy in the north currently centres on problems faced by the Teknecik power station near Kyrenia, with Kib-Tek the Republic’s electricity authority (EAC) millions of euros every month to ensure the lights remain on.

To this end, El-Sen leader Tugcu had also warned at the end of last month that the ‘government’ planned to implement a 15 per cent increase in electricity tariffs, but that this had been delayed until after the largest party of the three-party ruling coalition, the National Unity Party (UBP), had held their party conference.

“They are hiding it because the conference is happening. They have neglected their duty for two months. They call us ‘saboteurs’ but they are the real ‘saboteurs’,” he said, referring to a night of high drama at Teknecik, wherein he and ‘prime minister’ Ustel traded verbal insults.