Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday 16/9/2009 Page: 2
THE Federal Government's $175 million "green loans" scheme is in disarray, with thousands of people waiting for their loans to be approved and many staff awaiting payment. The program is supposed to supply low-interest loans to households so they can reduce energy use and install solar panels and efficient lighting.
But staff employed as green loans assessors, contracted by the Government to make reports on individual households, said the software problems with carbon emissions calculators had derailed the scheme. Some householders had lost money waiting for loans to be approved. A flood of complaints from customers are laid out in an online forum for green loans assessors, some of whom said they were frustrated at the lack of government support.
"We don't want to harm the program; this is our living," one green loans assessor told the Herald. "We really believe in the program, we want this to succeed and we want to work with the Government to make it happen, but it just seems that the lines of communication are permanently shut off." Many staff say they are still waiting for their payments, because their contracts say they must approve household carbon assessments before they get paid.
The Greens senator Christine Milne, who questioned the Government about the scheme in the Senate yesterday, said it was becoming a shambles. "This important program has to be urgently fixed so that Australian householders can access green loans and small businesses can get off the ground." A spokesman for the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, said applications for green loans had begun, and 10,000 assessments had been conducted on households.
0 comments:
Post a Comment