A meeting of the People's Deputy of Ukraine, member of the "Our Ukraine" faction, head of the representation of Viktor Yushchenko's bloc "Our Ukraine" in the Volyn region, Volodymyr Bondar, with voters took place at the "Prosvita" People's House on Sunday, May 18. The purpose of the meeting was to summarize the activities of the People's Deputy from the Lutsk electoral district during the first year of work in parliament. Volodymyr Nalkovych believes that communication with voters should be constant, "for a deputy," he says, "it is important to hear feedback about his work; without the active participation of the entire community, not a single problem will be solved." The People's Deputy sees his work as clearly structured; cooperation with deputies of all levels must be established. "In solving the problems that voters bring to us, we always approach them structurally. If a problem needs to be solved locally, it is handled by deputies from the 'Our Ukraine' faction in the city council; if it is of a regional level, we pass it to the deputy faction in the regional council; and if the matter concerns legislative regulation, it is resolved personally by me," says Volodymyr Nalkovych. The People's Deputy is convinced that such an approach in his work has yielded positive results. Problems of a material nature are resolved through agreements with local authorities and business. The member of the "Our Ukraine" faction assured that despite political differences, we work fruitfully with local authorities to solve the problems of Lutsk residents.
The assistant to the People's Deputy, Oleksandr Martyniuk, informed those present that during the year of activity, about five hundred citizens approached People's Deputy Bondar, with more than three hundred written applications and appeals received alone. Some of them concern material assistance and assistance for treatment. People left by the state alone with their problems desperately seek any source of such assistance. However, in this way only a small share of all requests and appeals can be provided for. Therefore, trying to find other ways of helping, Volodymyr Bondar is working to create such mechanisms of social protection so that situations that put a person in a dead end and force them involuntarily to become a supplicant or beggar arise as rarely as possible. During the meeting, it was emphasized that Volodymyr Nalkovych works fruitfully with the chief physicians of the regional clinical hospital, the oncology dispensary, and the city hospital, who always respond promptly and constructively to deputy inquiries regarding the need for urgent treatment of patients using funds allocated in budgets of various levels for medical provision for Lutsk residents.
Along with this, in his activities the People's Deputy has repeatedly encountered requests from medical workers themselves to assist in purchasing equipment, carrying out major repairs of polyclinics and inpatient facilities, and with urgent demands from medical workers for higher wages. During the year of deputy powers, such petitions were received from city polyclinic No. 3, the regional infectious diseases hospital, and the situation was especially tense in the oncology dispensary. It is worth noting that the "Our Ukraine" faction in the Lutsk City Council actively supported the allocation of over one million hryvnias in this year's city budget for updating medical equipment in the city's healthcare institutions. Volodymyr Bondar approved such a position of his colleagues, in turn defending allocations for this sector in the state budget. Admittedly, solving problems in the healthcare sector, in Volodymyr Bondar's opinion, will be achieved through the introduction of insurance medicine in Ukraine.
A separate painful problem of the city district is communal services. There are several dozen applications with complaints about housing and communal problems. Most issues of housing and communal themes fall within the competence of local self-government bodies; however, practice shows that the city authorities are not at all against improving the quality of roads in the city, repairing entrances and roofs, or replacing water and heat supply networks — as a rule, these problems have not been solved for many years due to lack of funding.
Particularly acute are the issues of obtaining new housing by Lutsk residents and the problems of demolishing or carrying out major repairs of dilapidated and emergency housing stock. For example, Lutsk residents have repeatedly approached Volodymyr Bondar with the problem of delays in commissioning buildings constructed with investors' funds, apartments in which people fully paid for several years ago, as happened with the building at 24a Sobornosti Avenue in Lutsk. The second stage of the dormitory of the city electric transport enterprise has stood unfinished for a long time. Volodymyr Bondar keeps the resolution of precisely these citizens' appeals under his own control. As for the "emergency fund," which not only bothers its residents with everyday hardships but also spoils the appearance of the Old Town, the People's Deputy gave instructions to develop a program for resettling its residents with the involvement of credit resources from banks and construction organizations for the construction of new housing. So far the matter is at the stage of economic calculations, but the experience of residential development in the capital of Ukraine testifies to the practical possibility of solving even such a complicated and capital-intensive problem. Collective complaints from residents of dormitories of the LPZ and the arts school, "Volynrembud" on Sahaidachnoho Street, VAT "Volteks," VAT "Prombud-5," received in the name of Deputy Bondar, record tariffs for housing and communal services in dormitories higher than average, arbitrary actions of commandants in matters of settling residents, mutual accusations between current and former employees of enterprises regarding the legality of residence, problems with timely payment for services, claims by families who have grown over decades of living in temporary rooms for normal well-appointed housing, and so on. For the most part, the prosecutor's office, which carries out inspections of dormitory activities on the submission of the People's Deputy, finds no violations in the actions of managers. The problem of departmental housing stock is more of a psychological and social character, in the aspect of social justice, than in the plane of legal compliance, although today all legislators recognize that the Housing Code of Ukraine does not correspond to modern norms of domestic law.
Among other issues with which Lutsk residents often approach their elected representative are compensation of citizens' savings in the Savings Bank of the USSR, State Insurance, and bankrupt banks "Kniazhyi," "Hradobank," "Ukraina," "Kyivska Rus," and so on, as well as wage arrears from bankrupt enterprises "Lutskyi maslozavod," ATP "0201," payments to military servicemen of compensation for unused clothing allowance; more than a dozen written applications concern requests to assist in installing telephones for privileged categories of citizens. The issues are not simple, since their resolution runs into a lack of funds or technical capabilities, but the deputy tries to solve them as well.
Separately, it must be stipulated that voters' requests to assist in protecting their interests in the judicial resolution of certain issues run into the Constitutional Court's prohibition on deputies interfering in judicial consideration of cases, since this is regarded as pressure on justice. That is precisely why the deputy's reception office has initiated the practice of providing citizens with free consultations by a qualified lawyer, which has fully justified itself.
The next question is how much such an expensive pleasure as nationwide discussion cost Ukrainian taxpayers? We will most likely receive an answer to this question only under a new president.
As for charity, during the year of deputy powers Volodymyr Bondar took part in financing the publication of the textbook "History of Ancient Greece. Course of Lectures" by Tkachuk P.D., outfitting the KVN team from Lutsk for competitions in Brest, where the team worthily presented Ukraine and won first place, purchasing New Year's gifts for the wards of the Rozhyshche shelter and large families, and supporting the vocal ensembles "Akord" and "Nota Neo." Financial assistance is received by the church in Boholiuby and the rehabilitation center for the disabled "Dzherelo zhyttia." At the initiative of the leadership of Vocational School No. 12, fabric and thread were purchased with the People's Deputy's funds, from which students, through practical training, sewed diapers for the Lutsk maternity hospital. Volodymyr Bondar sees the main task of his activity not as charity, but as creating such living conditions so that every institution, organization, and every Ukrainian is provided with everything necessary for a dignified life, so that work is properly valued, and social protection guarantees are fulfilled in full and at a high level.
Achieving this, in the People's Deputy's opinion, is possible only through purposeful legislative work. In fact, only 7 written proposals from Lutsk citizens regarding the deputy's legislative initiatives were received by the public reception office. But Volodymyr Bondar is grateful to the heads of enterprises and organizations of the city, structural subdivisions of the executive power, and leaders of public organizations for active cooperation in identifying the contradictions contained in modern Ukrainian legislation, and for constructive proposals from practitioners who do not spare time to share experience gained over many years of work in various spheres of public activity. Cooperation between the People's Deputy and the regional Pension Fund and Employment Center, the city computing center, the department of labor and social protection of the population, and other structures of the executive power has been established in a timely manner. "As a rule," the deputy notes, "my activity finds more understanding precisely at the city level. This is entirely logical, because, despite possible differences in political or ideological views, we all defend the interests of one territorial community — the city of Lutsk — which forces us to seek common solutions for the benefit of its residents."
Volodymyr Bondar is convinced that a European quality of life for Lutsk residents can be ensured not only by changing the general situation in the state, but also, in part, by the efforts of a separate territorial community. The city must be known in other regions and in other countries; investment must be attracted and a favorable business environment created. Much has been done by the deputy in this direction: the work of the Regulatory Reform Program is supported, which produces transparent and effective regulatory acts for entrepreneurship in Lutsk, Novovolynsk, Kovel, and Horokhiv; with the deputy's support, the project "Lutsk Investment" is being implemented, which provides for the publication of a full-color Ukrainian-English booklet about the city, the operation of a website on the Internet, and the dissemination of information on other media; meetings have been held with the leadership of many Polish cities and voivodeships regarding economic cooperation with Lutsk; participation in the International Economic Forum in Krynica-Zdroj (Republic of Poland) gave Volodymyr Nalkovych the opportunity to establish contacts with government officials and business representatives of Eastern European countries.
Everything listed is only a part of the daily work of People's Deputy Bondar, the team of his assistants and like-minded people, and the political structures of the "Our Ukraine" bloc. "I will direct all my work toward ensuring that the human being in our state is the highest value, so that none of the citizens complains about the state and is proud of being Ukrainian," noted Volodymyr Bondar.
Volodymyr Nalkovych answered all questions from those present; the deputy instructed his assistant-consultants to review and resolve some of the appeals received in his name in the hall and to give exhaustive and concrete answers to the correspondents. Volodymyr Bondar also promised to take under control such painful issues as the indebtedness of certain enterprises to workers, the problem of railway connection between Lutsk and other cities, transport connection of certain parts of the city, and other painful problems of citizens.