Protest Against Water Charges Collectors

antrim | worker & community struggles and protests | event notice Sunday January 28, 2007 17:38 by non-payer - We Won't Pay Campaign wewontpay at btconnect dot com 028 90 311778

PROTEST AGAINST CRYSTAL ALLIANCE (Echo)

12pm Thursday 1st February
outside Capital House, 3 Upper Queen St, Belfast

Crystal Alliance (now known as Echo), the private consortium of multi-national companies contracted to collect water charges on behalf of Northern Ireland Water Ltd., will be holding an open recruitment day on Thursday 1st February.

This company recently caused outrage when it was revealed that they had categorised working class communities as 'Rock Bottom' and wealthy areas as 'Affluent Achievers' as part of a strategy to try and cope with mass non-payment of water charges. (See article below for more details.)

The We Won't Pay Campaign has called this protest to remind Crystal Alliance and the Government that they will not get away with bullying people into paying water charges. Our campaign has popularised mass non-payment and we will not allow these specialist debt collectors to harass and intimidate people into paying this double tax.

The We Won't Pay Campaign calls on everyone who is opposed to water charges to come to this protest and bring along friends, workmates and family.

For more info contact 90311778 or 07743282321.

Rock solid - Not Rock Bottom
THE GOVERNMENT scored a spectacular own-goal when it was revealed that the private company tasked with enforcing payment of water charges labelled working class communities as ‘rock bottom’ and wealthy householders as ‘affluent achievers’.

Crystal Alliance is a consortium of major private companies which specialise in utility debt recovery. They are being paid £70 million of taxpayer’s money to harass people into paying water charges.

As part of their ‘debt recovery’ strategy, they have categorised working class areas as ‘rock bottom’ and have stated that people in this category who do not pay water charges will be issued with reminders to pay after 14 days. They will then be issued with legal action if they still do not pay after 49 days.

But if you are an ‘affluent achiever’ (ie. rich), in the event of not paying you will be sent a reminder after 28 days (twice as long as ‘rock bottom’) and threatened with legal action after 80 days (31 days longer than ‘rock bottom’).

The Government has sunk rock bottom in resorting to these dirty tricks. This blatant class bias has further strengthened support for mass non-payment.