Old tricks by new officials

The reader will remember that this past winter citizens of Kyiv received bills from municipal services which included payment for cleaning the yards from snow and ice. Meanwhile, the yards of high-rise apartment buildings, nearly all streets, and even some roads to the administrative buildings remained covered with heaps of snow and wild skating rinks where many people fell and broke their arms and legs.

Finally, after the New Year, the Kyiv State Administration reacted to the situation. However, the reaction was somewhat unusual: they didn’t start cleaning the city, didn’t apologize before the citizens, didn’t give them their money back, and didn’t pay the compensations to the injured. The only thing they did, in their own words, was the recalculation of payment bills: the tariff for people that lived in one building went down by six hryvnias 47 kopiikas, in some other — down by three hryvnias, and the rest had everything as it was. However, the officials considered everything to be fine. “Recalculation of payments was made only for residents of those buildings that provided ­do­cuments to prove the unsatisfactory cleaning of the territory — letters of the residents and pictures of the yards,” said Stanislav Kaplunenko, director of Main Data-Processing Center of Kyiv City State Administration. “Besides, in some rare cases the payment for cleaning was completely excluded from the payment for municipal services.” It looks like there was a special commission that went around the city and filed reports. To put it short, the officials worked at full capacity while the city remained, with some rare exceptions, untouched — even though the money for anti-snow services (calculated, by the way, by the very same officials) kept coming.

Thus, the Kyiv officials earned good spoils during this winter following the method of Ostap Bender, and the Kyiv City State Administration worked in the mode of Horns and Hoofs office. The only difference is that the great schemer didn’t have administrative control in his hands, while these people do and that is why let themselves goof on citizens: as if saying, if you would actively complaint to us about us, we could possibly pay you back a small amount of money that we took from you for the services which we didn’t provide.

The winter passed and the summer has come. People changed in the key positions, except for the head of the Kyiv City State Administration. The talks about a new, more effective style of work began to spread. That was the time when citizens of Kyiv began to receive bills with raised ­ta­riffs for gas, hot water, and central heating. The amount of the tariff increases again was not set due to ­tho­rough calculations under the control of independent experts, but accor­ding to the will of the officials — ­either Ukrainian or those from the IMF. But it makes no big difference. What is, in fact, interesting is that many citizens all of a sudden disco­vered that they had debts for the gas. Where did that come from? The same Kaplu­nen­ko is once again explaining that the debts for the gas appear in the summer due to the planned ­tur­ning off the hot water in the mainline because people warm the water up ­using gas when they want to take a bath. The debt is incurred automatically on the bills of those people who have no meters installed at home. However, in the past years Kyivans did not see any such “tricks” with payments for hot water in their bills. It turns out that there is a very old (almost from the times of the USSR) decree of the Cabinet of Ministers that regulates this.

Now, let us just think: it is unbearably hot outside, nearly 35-40 degrees, and a weak stream of water of over 25 is coming out of the taps, and the Kyiv City State Administration officials demands that citizens pay extra money for warming the water up in bowls on gas stoves. Not only Bender comes to one’s mind, but more likely The Good Soldier Svejk with the excellent description of unshakable idiocy of the state apparatus of the Habsburg Empire. That same Empire, which, by the way, in the time described by Jaroslav Hasek was about, if to put it metaphorically, to shake its feet for the last time.

Then maybe it would be just as fair to present the citizens of the capital with the bill for the air breathed in that is above the norm — while walking fast or jogging in the morning. If someone doesn’t want to pay extra then he can put on a gas mask and install a meter. It would be also a good idea to impose fines on citizens for not cleaning the streets from snow. It is a mere discomfort for the officials: they can easily slip and fall on their uneasy way from the official car to the entrance of the building. In addition to that, it would be good to tax all the families with infants because they create additional disorder in the yards which are so thoroughly cleaned in the summer and winter time through the efforts of the Kyiv City State Administration and Housing Offices. There will always be many ways for Kyiv officials to put more money in their pockets.

Mr. Kaplunenko will always explain to you with great authority why you received bills with such big sums and what you still owe to the city authorities.