Author:

Mihály Béla Kacskovics

They want to cut off the gas in the Hungarian Evangelical Brotherhood due to a debt, while the Hungarian state also owes them. Its activists are trying to prevent the gas meter from being dismantled.

“It was unexpected and it happened in a higher order, this was revealed,” István Ónodi, economic director of the Hungarian Evangelical Brotherhood (MET) and the Charitable Protection Association (OKE), told our newspaper about the attempt to dismantle the meters of gas in their homeless streets on Dankó Street on Thursday.

MET, led by Gábor Iványi, has a debt of approximately HUF 30 million with the National Public Service Companies. Ónodi said the dispute with the power company has been going on for a long time: since 2018, they have been unable to pay their gas bills. “So far they have been patient, we have had an installment agreement before. Now, before winter, they thought it was time to disassemble our clocks, ”said Ónodi. On Thursday, however, the gas meters in the beloved house on Dankó Street were not dismantled. The institution provides a complex service to the homeless: they serve as a warmer day and night, they also have a popular kitchen, and their staff also carry out street social work and medical care. The beloved house currently has approximately six hundred residents.

On Thursday afternoon, Ónodi described: “Yesterday they left the National Utilities, they said that we have a debt, they have a duty to take the gas meter. I said that we would not give it, I had to sign it too, for that they said that then they had to get them off the street ”. There are gas taps on the street, through which public services can, in justified cases, control which house will have hot water and heating and which will not. “When I accompanied the utility personnel, I indicated that I had an urgent task at the point where they could cut the gas. They understood what he was talking about, they talked to their boss on the phone and then they left, ”said Ónodi.

István Ónodi

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There was also a small demonstration to prevent the dismantling of the gas clocks – a voluntary alert chain was launched, and in the Thursday news, volunteers and students from Johns Wesley Pastoral Training College are also participating in the monitoring of the gas taps. The demonstration will be reported to the police every day from midnight to midnight from Thursday until two months (November 17).

The activists take turns to watch the taps, but in their tools they have apparently taken from the repositories of the University of Theater and Film Arts: mills and the already known red and white ribbons have reappeared.

At the moment, they do not know when the gas is coming from the utilities, they have so much information that the next attempts to close taps in the rural MET institutions are expected after September 21, as the Church has accumulated almost 100 million HUF in debt in the form of gas bills nationwide. Fundraising has also started, but Ónodi has not been able to quantify the amount raised since Thursday, only saying that they are still far from the 30 million amount. Ónodi added: They are extremely grateful for all the donations.

Gábor Iványi reacted to the “attempted gas cut” this Thursday, writing in his statement that “out of revenge they have obviously created a discriminatory situation” for them, “their debts arise from this situation. The pastor added: “There is a dictatorship in Hungary and arbitrariness is the lord. Europe must show that it is on the side of those who have not only committed themselves to European values ​​at the time of accession and believe that this community has the will, the will and the strength to stop arbitrariness and guarantee European standards ”.

“Two years ago, the utilities were told that they could terminate our contract. However, national public services are owned by the state, and the state belongs to us, we thought, it could be a compensation option. That was not heard. “If the state has not actually paid the people of Iványi since 2018, then according to Ónodi that amount will significantly exceed its current debt of HUF 30 million.” In 2011, the church status was revoked from the MET Although this was declared illegal by both the Constitutional Court and the Strasbourg Human Rights Court, and the state recognized the violation, we have not regained the status since then. “

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Its financial situation, on the other hand, became critical as of 2017, since three years ago, “the state also does not pay through recognized rights,” Ónodi referred to the lack of state subsidies. Since 2017, the state has racked up billions of debts to Gábor Iványi, as well as taken away the right to receive one percent of the donor tax until then.

This is not the first time that Pastor Gábor Iványi’s unrecognized church has been deported for economic reasons: in late August, we reported that the state was withdrawing 95 million HUF from the subsidy amount for MET schools. According to Iványi, the Ministry of Human Resources (EMMI) justified the decision by saying that “they cannot measure their educational achievements.”

In 2012, after the withdrawal of church status, the government entered into a public education contract with the MET, which was not renewed in the summer of 2020. According to Iványi, Zoltán Maruzsa, Emmi’s Secretary of State for Education, recommended that they could receive half the subsidy one last time if they later agreed not to sign a new contract. Maruzsa allegedly even suggested that if the MET cannot sustain the institutions, it is willing to retain them in the state.

In the late afternoon on Friday, National Utilities also responded to the problem. In their statement, they write that gas is only cut for those who do not pay long term. They add that, as always, in the case of the OKE, efforts were made to find a common solution, for example by announcing a voluntary moratorium on closure from March until the end of the emergency. As written, this moratorium has resulted in none of the more than 30 uses of OKE being cut off the pipes.

Csaba M. Kiss recently spoke with Gábor Iványi about hvg360.


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Attempts were made to dismantle gas meters in the institutions of Gábor Iványi


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At home

The service provider wanted to dismantle the gas meters of the Dankó Street institutions in Budapest.


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“This is not Christianity,” but “paganism and greedy selfishness,” sums up the pastor who once baptized Viktor Orbán’s children. He does not yet know how the financial gap is being filled, which is due to the fact that the government has taken 95 million guilders from the schools of his church, the Hungarian Evangelical Brotherhood, which welcomes young people in need. Iványi says that the poor are by no means left alone, and continues to confess that “if you have the opportunity to speak, you can only tell the truth.