In an email to the editorial office, the reader did not hide his outrage and frustration over what he went through with the official subordinate to Mayor Andrzej Dutkowski from October 2022 to December 2022.

The specific nature of our applications is that, on the same plot where our house stands, I built a second small house with our children and grandchildren in mind. So: I applied for a coal allowance for my property, while my wife applied for hers. (...). When my wife submitted her application for the allowance, she did not list me as a person jointly residing in the house where the heating source is located. I, on the other hand, applied as the owner of the second house. And since my wife and I went to GOPS together, we were identified as potential fraudsters. I say this without exaggeration, because that is what she (...) called us: that we wanted to extort allowances (...).

The story described below concerns only one application, submitted by the reader’s wife for one household. The husband told us the entire story.

War with the official

The battle began on October 18, 2022, when the wife, a resident of Bolesławiec gmina, received a refusal from GOPS in Kruszyn in response to her application for a coal allowance. The reason given was that the heating source had not been entered into the Central Register of Emissions of Buildings (CEEB) before August 11, 2022.

On October 31, 2022, the woman appealed the GOPS decision to the Local Government Appeals Board (SKO) in Jelenia Góra. In the appeal, she wrote that her husband had informed her that he had submitted the declaration on the CEEB website on time (before August 11, 2022), but the system had not updated it, even though, after submission, a message appeared stating that everything had been completed correctly. The husband contacted the website administrator about the matter, and his wife added in her letter to SKO that the gmina had subsidized their ecological pellet boiler room and knew what heating source they had. However, this did not help. In a letter dated November 2, 2022, GOPS, acting on the mayor’s authorization, again refused to pay the coal allowance and rejected the woman’s appeal to SKO of October 31, 2022.

Visits to GOPS in Kruszyn

The couple personally visited the Municipal Social Welfare Centre in Kruszyn to clarify the matter and described their experiences after speaking with the official.

“This is a battle with (...), the head of GOPS in Kruszyn,” the reader wrote in an email. “And during a direct conversation, someone from the office claimed that all we cared about was those PLN 3,000, that we were looking for front men and shooting ourselves in the foot by fighting. (...) It is a nightmare in Kruszyn, Bolesławiec’s bedroom community,” he added.

In his email to the editorial office, the reader and his family also complained that the official (or officials) had asked them about their marital status and the number of people registered at the household listed in the application. According to the reader, the data allegedly requested by the official (or officials) were not needed to complete the coal allowance application correctly and merely caused discomfort for the reader’s family, who were running out of arguments in their conversations with officials.

“She asked us why the wife was applying for the allowance, why she had not listed her husband, and where he was registered,” the reader wrote in an email about the conversation with the official. “She was concerned with the removal of waste from the property (not the coal allowance that the reader was trying to arrange—editor’s note). She informed me that if they detected any inconsistencies, they could impose a penalty going back up to five years,” the man wrote.

War with the official: another clash

On November 3, 2022, amendments to the regulations concerning the coal allowance came into force. They were introduced in Articles 26 and 31 of the Act on the Preferential Purchase of Solid Fuel for Households (Journal of Laws of 2022, item 2236) and opened up new possibilities for granting the coal allowance to households, including those whose main heating source had not been reported or entered into CEEB by August 11, 2022.

On November 17, 2022, SKO in Jelenia Góra overturned the GOPS decision and referred the case back for reconsideration. Everything indicated that the woman would receive the coal allowance. Unfortunately, on November 25, the head of GOPS in Kruszyn again refused to pay the allowance.

“They still will not pay it, because the amendment does not apply to us, since I submitted the CEEB declaration myself after August 22, 2022, and did so repeatedly,” the outraged reader wrote, explaining the grounds for GOPS’s further refusal to grant the coal allowance. “I did this, I entered it into CEEB repeatedly, to show that the system is imperfect and to prove this to the people who said it should not accept the same data but it did,” the reader emphasized in the email.

Not giving up, the reader asked other institutions to interpret the law. Among others, the man asked an official from MOPS in Bolesławiec for an interpretation; she agreed with him and found that the allowance should be granted.

“The county head also received us and invited the head of the Building Department in Bolesławiec to interpret the regulations concerning the reporting of the heating source,” the reader described his consultations. “Everyone agreed that the allowance should be paid in accordance with the ruling of the Local Government Appeals Board in Jelenia Góra dated November 17, 2022.”

Finally, Mayor Dutkowski himself instructed the reader’s wife to go to Kruszyn again and submit another application.

“She (...) refused the allowance again. And another appeal. And once again a letter to SKO in Jelenia Góra,” wrote the now deeply embittered reader. “She wanted to have it her way. And they had already paid those who used the entire allowance to buy seven tonnes of lignite and pollute the environment so much that, even with the windows closed, the smell of coal smoke could be felt inside homes, in accordance with the law in force allowing people to burn anything,” he added.

War with the official: victory

The coal allowance was finally paid in December 2022.

“At last, (...) she gave in and sent a messenger to confirm the heating source declared in the allowance application. The grant was paid thanks to my persistence,” the reader added in his email.

We sent an inquiry to the Municipal Social Welfare Centre in Kruszyn on Wednesday, March 1, after working hours. We asked for comment on the refusal to pay the coal allowance to the reader’s wife after GOPS considered the application submitted on November 15, 2022, and asked whether GOPS had not been informed of the change in the deadline for entering the heating source into CEEB (or the removal of the deadline), or perhaps had not received adequate legal support.

We are awaiting a response. We will publish it as soon as we receive it.

Italicized text — editor’s note.