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Impudence of the Housing and Utilities Infrastructure

79
Impudence of the Housing and Utilities Infrastructure

"A guy with mustache" has come up with tariffs, and we pay for them.

Since January 1, 2018 Belarus introduces total payment for housing and communal services. Belarusians will face the result of the "experience" in February.

Officials of the housing and communal services repeatedly stated that they carried "intolerable burden" of subsidization on their back. It turned out that not only pensioners, people with low income and the needy were hedged round with care and attention. "The lion's share" of assistance were alllocated to owners of luxurous houses. It's elementary mathematics: the more square meters the house has, the more assistance it receives. There are apartments of 40 m², and houses of 500 m². And the number of subsidies is much higher in the second case.

The Charter97.org asked a well-known economist, leader of the Strategy analytical center Leanid Zaika to comment on this "subsidization".

- We are dealing with an ordinary Soviet-kolkhoz system. Out state only dreams of driving up prices for housing and communal services. This is the only panacea for all diceases. No one tries to seek a solution lying on the surface. Every house can be equipped with an independent boiler. You pay for the gas used. If you want to turn on heating in July, just do it. But it is not our story. A silly and useless one.

I set an objective to find out how many of these houses, castles and palaces pay for gas. It turned out that figures in every region differ, but on average gas tariffs are less by 40%. Any official pays $70-130 less for 1 thous. cubic meters. Everything depends on the region.

This issue requires the detalization. There should be no such differentiation. The price for gas must be equal.

I'd like to draw the people's attention to the fact that the subsidization originates from their own pockets. Our budget does not come from Mars. The budget consists of taxes paid by Belarusians. It's a ridiculous situation. We paid taxes, housing and communal services were subsidized, and then they say that there will be no subsidies, although you still pay taxes. What to do then?

- We should at least stop subsidizing the rich, and to provide assistance to the needy, as it is done all over the world. Should there be impose special tariff rates for such "estates", something like the luxury law?

- Well, there is only one person who lives a lush life. The main part of the population which pays for services is far from luxury.

I think that specialists should go into the communal sphere.

I offer to start from a small eurotrip: we take the Prime Minister, Minister of Energy by hand and leave for Berlin. We take lots of pictures on the way. Almost every house in Germany is equipped with a solar cell. There are windmills at every step in Holland.

I'm convinced that there are a lot of people in our country who would like to join the profitable business of electricity production. The market must be opened and the monopoly of the state must be abolished. We face a complete nonsense here: if you build a huge windmill, no electricity produced by it can't be sold.

- Can we trust tariff rates voiced by officials? How can we learn how much the state subsidizes?

- The sphere of housing and communal services is not transparent at all. Directors of water and wastewater treatment plants earn $1500. They make money on ignorance of people. "A guy with mustache" has come up with tariffs, and we pay for them. Our officials come up with figures during four years.

The problem must be definitely solved. Some officials in the sphere must be imprisoned, other must face even larger terms. Specialist should come to their places.

I need a million dollar to hire Swedish specialists to monitor all expenses in the housing and utilities infrastructure. They will learn hom much a cubic meter of gas, a kilo of garbage, a liter of water, kW of energy costs. If every Belarusian donates 20 kopecks, the monitoring will be carried out. And those who accept current figures do not respect themselves.

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