Consumers Suffer Lack of Almost Everything : Romania Fights Woes of Another Winter

There was not much cheer among hard-pressed consumers when electricity restrictions in force for the past six winters were eased recently.

When they had done their calculations, they found they could use one 40-watt bulb for an extra 10 minutes a day.

Small comfort when the average winter electricity allocation is enough to light a typical apartment for only two or three hours a day and excludes the use of refrigerators or washing machines. Electric heaters have been banned for years.

Meanwhile, central heating for Romanian households was cut to four and a half hours a day, and hot water to between two and four hours up to Dec. 15.

From then until March 1, the coldest months of the year, households will be heated for seven hours a day, but the hot water ration has been extended by only half an hour a day.

To save electricity, all shops and businesses must close by 5:30 p.m. and restaurants by 9 p.m.

Public offices, schools and institutions are ordered to gear their opening times to make maximum use of daylight hours but under a recent decree are allowed to heat for a couple of hours on Sundays if there is a danger of the pipes freezing.

Airport Terminal Unheated

Even the international terminal at Bucharest’s Otopeni Airport is unheated. On a recent visit to Romania, Western businessmen, muffled against the biting cold inside the building, scanned the boards anxiously for their flights as they swapped stories of trying to do business in chilly hotel rooms, offices and factories.

For the sixth straight winter, Romanians are facing chronic shortages of everything, including food, as the country’s autocratic leader Nicolae Ceausescu diverts most of the country’s resources to paying off its foreign debts.

Meanwhile, imports have been cut to the barest essentials, and these do not include badly needed new power-generating equipment to replace the country’s antiquated stock.

Ceausescu decreed five years ago that the $10-billion debt must be paid off in five years, and this has almost been achieved, though at a heavy price in human deprivation.

As virtually all fresh food is sold to the West for hard currency, Romanians wait in long lines for unsalable parts such as pig’s feet and sheep heads, when they are available.

Pig’s feet, which are virtually unexportable, are popularly referred to as “patriots,” since they never leave their homeland.

“I have seen fresh meat only half a dozen times this year,” one foreign resident said.

Rationing to Continue

Despite promises from the leadership that there will be more food for everyone next year, the 1989 food and consumer goods production program just published makes it clear that many items, such as cooking oil and sugar, will continue to be rationed.

For sugar, the ration is slightly more than 2.2 pounds. For oil, it is less than a quart per person per month.

Foreigners living in Romania, particularly students from Third World countries, were making regular food-buying trips across the border to Bulgaria until recently when they were stopped by customs authorities there who apparently feared this could cause shortages in their country.

Potatoes are virtually unobtainable for any Romanians without relatives in the country cultivating tiny private plots or without access to luxury goods such as coffee and American cigarettes, available only on the black market, which are traded like hard currency.

Coffee is so much sought after that prostitutes are happy to take it as payment, according to a Western press report quoting long-distance truck drivers.

One driver was quoted as saying half a pound of coffee would be an acceptable price for one night.