| The Russian Democratic Party YABLOKO expresses its deep concern in view of the series of disasters in the housing and communal services sector in many regions of Russia. Owing to accidents to the heat supply systems hundreds of houses, schools, kindergartens and hospitals
were deprived of heating. A critical situation has developed in Karelia, Komi and Sakha republics, Novgorod, Leningrad, Arkhangelsk, Kamchatka and Sakhalin regions, Maritime Territory, the Koryak Autonomous District, as well as a number of other regions.
The Russian Democratic Party YABLOKO thinks that the critical situation is a direct consequences of the failure of the government's policy in the housing and communal sector.
This situation can only be resolved by immediately launching real structural reforms in the housing and communal sector. A plan of the reform is attached (Ed. A translation of these is not
supplied here.) The following should be the key measures:
- a three year tax exemption for private companies that are not monopolists and solely operate and repair the housing stock and service municipal engineering communications, and grant in addition tax breaks to these companies for five years;
- 50% reduction in tariffs for communal services for partnerships of housing owners, housing and construction companies and other forms of collective housing ownership and management for a five year period;
- 75% reduction in tariffs on communal services for those citizens who have set metres for three years;
- mandatory auditing of monopolists, including publication of the results in the press;
- open tenders for the right to manage monopolies and their servicing by contractors at all levels from communal services to Gazprom and RAO UES.
Further delay with such transformations in the housing and communal sector may lead next winter to an increasing intensification of the crisis and pose a threat that most of the country will freeze.
Attached: Plan of Immediate Anti-Crisis Measures for the Housing and Communal Services Sector, 3 pages.
January 15, 2003
Chairman of the party
Grigory Yavlinsky
See also:
Housing and Communal Reform
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