Mayor who placed himself under house arrest due to municipal debts speaks out: 'We want options to be offered'

Konya Ereğli Mayor Umut Akpınar had reacted to the freezing of the municipality's accounts for the collection of municipal debts by placing himself under house arrest.

Akpınar explained the process he is going through during a live broadcast on tv100.

Here is what Mayor Akpınar said about the process:

"At the point we have reached, the freezing of our company account has blocked all our operations! The municipality has a debt of 700 million liras. Our debt to the SGK is 76 million 600 thousand liras...

A collective bargaining agreement was made with the workers in January last year, and their salaries were raised to the 24-25 thousand lira band. Since that time, the employees' salaries have been paid, but the SGK premium debts have not. After we took office, we paid the salaries, but we could not pay the premium debts. Following the subsequent statements and developments, we began negotiations with the SGK regarding the payment of the debts.

However, during this period, since our debt exceeded 40 million liras, the matter was transferred to the general directorate. We continued to discuss the issue with them, but in the meantime, our accounts were frozen. We have 598 company employees, and we are experiencing difficulties regarding how to make the January salary payments.

"STATE INSTITUTIONS SHOULD NOT BLOCK EACH OTHER"

We want state institutions not to block our path. Without even feeling the need to issue any warning regarding our debt, they made deductions from our Iller Bank revenue in three installments.

We want to serve this city, our citizens, and the needy; they should not block our path. My grievance is not with previous administrations or names. We have no weariness, no resentment, no hopelessness! There should be cooperation between state institutions; state institutions should not block each other. If it is done this way, how are we going to serve the citizens!

We will definitely overcome these days; this is a symbolic protest. As of Wednesday, I will be back on duty, and I will do whatever I can.

I am a person who seeks solutions, not fights. We want our freezes to be lifted and our debts to be restructured; we want options to be offered to us. We are also expecting help in this regard for the salary payments to be made on January 15.

We have negotiated with the SGK regarding paying our debts; we were asked to take a council decision, which we did. A court decision was requested for a valuation to be made, but officials from the commission have not come for two weeks.

We are a new municipality, and we will pay our debt."