FNC cuts its requests to energy body

Federal National Council have reduced their requests to the Federal Electricity and Water Authority, saying they do not want to overwhelm the authority.

ABU DHABI // Members of the Federal National Council have reduced their requests to the Federal Electricity and Water Authority (Fewa), saying they do not want to overwhelm the authority and have the most important recommendations overlooked.

Fourteen such suggestions were put forward by the FNC at the last session. Of those, four have been dropped.

"I think 14 recommendations will be too much," said Dr Abdulrahim Al Shahin (Ras Al Khaimah). "The Cabinet might agree on the ones that are not so important, and ignore the ones that are, but it will still look like they accepted a lot of them due to the high number of recommendations."

Dr Amal Al Qubaisi (Abu Dhabi) said she had heard complaints when the council had passed too many recommendations.

The 10 passed to Fewa included exempting some from water and electricity bills, financially supporting water and electricity services to local homes, studying complaints made by authority employees, increased Emiratisation and studying customer satisfaction.

They also called for a system of independent internal monitoring to be set up.

The council said the authority should improve its water and electricity services, and set up labs to supervise water quality.

The FNC dropped calls to create awareness programmes and stricter accounting procedures.