Over 20,000 Belgians are yet to receive their €100 heating allowance which was made available to them by the Federal Government last year as a measure to help households pay their electricity bills.
FPS Economy has announced that 20,493 people are yet to receive a €100 allowance from the Federal Government to help them pay their heating bills. The issue has arisen due to the suppliers failing to communicate the correct information to process applications, according to FPS Economy.
The allowance had been announced by the Federal Government in February 2022, the idea being that they would be automatically taken off their bills by their electricity supplier between April and July 2022.
Furthermore, the federal service FPS Economy extended the deadline to 17 November for those who had not yet received the allowance by the end of August.. This led to the government agency receiving 264,500 applications in total, of which 20,493 are yet to be processed.
Lack of processing?
When asked by the Flemish outlet VRT NWS why 8% of these applicants had still not received their allowance, a spokesperson for FPS Economy Lien Meurisse laid the blame at the door of energy suppliers.
"All open applications have already been processed by the FPS Economy. We are now awaiting feedback from the energy suppliers," she stated.
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Meurisse then explained the federal service was yet to receive the necessary data from suppliers. "For example, in these contracts we do not know whether it is a second residence or a professional contract," information which is only known by the suppliers.
"As a result we do not know whether we can accept or have to refuse the application," given that the allowance has only been made available to individual households.
