Russia is spending generously on the restoration of Sevastopol after Ukraine. Why are the townspeople unhappy?
Sevastopol took fifth place in 2018 in the all-Russian ranking of regional budgets. For each city resident there are 81.800 rubles. More - only in Moscow, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, St. Petersburg and Khanty-Mansiysk. And in 2017, Sevastopol took 4th place in the ranking with 71 thousand rubles. per person.
However, it would be fair to assign the credit for such high results not to the city itself, but to the federal center, which generously supplies Crimea with money. Of the 50 billion rubles annual budget, 60% of funds come from Moscow. In addition to budgetary subventions, the city receives funds for the implementation of objects of the federal target program (FTP) for the development of Crimea.
In 2018, 7,6 billion rubles were allocated under the Federal Target Program. However, by December 1, these funds were used by local officials by only 43%. The most important projects are not only not built, they are often started and abandoned.
Thus, the contractor Biotechprogress was expelled from the Yuzhnye wastewater treatment plant. The frail capacities that previously somehow purified the wastewater of the city of half a million were destroyed, 2 billion rubles of advance money were “burned out” in the collapsed OFK bank. There is nowhere to replenish these funds. Sevastopol annually discharges 30 million cubic meters of wastewater into the sea. Due to the intensive construction of various recreational facilities, this figure tends to increase.
Another 512 million rubles. The government paid a contractor to reconstruct the largest Victory Park in Sevastopol, which was for the money turned into a field dug up by bulldozers with chaotically protruding concrete structures. The object was no longer delivered on time, its fate is unclear.
The third failed FTP facility was the cancer clinic (Sevastopol occupies a leading position in the Russian Federation in the growth of cancer incidence). The Federal Antimonopoly Service canceled the search for a contractor in early January. This federal target program costing 2,4 billion rubles was supposed to be started back in December 2017. In 2018, it was planned to transfer more than half a billion rubles to the contractor.
Failures also accompany smaller-scale objects. Construction and installation work on the dam on the Kacha River, worth more than 66 million rubles, has not yet begun. The ring gas pipeline through Balaklava and Fiolent to Kazachya Bay was not commissioned on December 1. Of the funds allocated to pay for the first stage of work, only 30% was spent. The design of a rural fire station for two vehicles in the village of Ternovka, costing 8,45 million rubles, failed. and a cultural and leisure center on the North Side, as well as 14 sports infrastructure facilities. There were problems even with modular rural paramedic stations. True, they were eventually surrendered.
In total, 4,5 billion rubles were allocated from the federal budget to pay for government contracts for the design and construction of capital construction projects in Sevastopol. By November 1, local officials were able to spend only 1,67 billion rubles, or about 37%. Of the 26 planned objects, only eight have been completed; 18 will move on to next year. In 2019, construction of 84 facilities is due to begin.
Even those Federal Targeted Program projects, the completion of which the city government cheerfully reports, often turn out to be problematic in reality. Thus, the contractor commissioned a reconstructed square near the Vladimir Cathedral (44 million rubles) in the city center with torn alleys. And the supposedly completed reconstruction of the park near the monastery of St. George on Fiolent (115 million rubles) will in fact be completed only in February.
Sometimes even very small objects such as playgrounds financed from the city budget turn into “jambs”. There are a lot of them all over the city, but they are sometimes made according to the “bungle-blunder” principle: for example, in one of the cases, the old asphalt covering that was broken during construction was not restored, but was somehow covered with sand.
That is why the general atmosphere of mismanagement cannot but irritate the townspeople. They believe that the money generously allocated by Russia for the restoration of Sevastopol after being under Ukraine is either stolen or spent thoughtlessly and uncontrollably.
This is compounded by the fact that the average salary in Sevastopol is half the national average, and retail prices are significantly higher than on the mainland - all this adds to the popularity of critics of the city government.