75 residents of the villages of the Markovychivska village council of the Volyn region, in an open letter to the Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko, ask her to complete the gasification of the settlements, to legalize the issue of the receipt into the local budget of the main taxes of "Lvivgazvydobuvannia," and also to conduct an independent expert assessment to study environmental safety, – reported the own correspondent of the Western Information Corporation. \n \n"On gas and without gas" – this is the situation in which the villagers living near the Lokachynske gas field find themselves. The situation is complicated by the fact that after the launch of the installation for purifying gas from hydrogen sulfide, the environmental situation of the settlements located near the field significantly worsened. Due to imperfect legislation, in the villagers' opinion, all the most significant taxes go to the budget at the place of the legal address of the enterprise GPU "Lvivgazvydobuvannia," under whose subordination the field is located, and not at the place of its actual location. That is, to Lviv, and not to the local budget. This includes, in particular, the fee for environmental pollution and the fee for geological exploration work. The gas administration is raising the issue that the rent payment for natural gas should also go to the capital of Galicia. \n \nSince the field was developed, as a result of the movement of heavy vehicles, the condition of residential buildings in these villages has significantly deteriorated. The commissions that were created to study this issue assured the residents that they would compensate for this with the materials necessary for carrying out gasification. However, this never happened, and the villagers have been driven to despair. \n \nIn their letter to Yulia Tymoshenko, the villagers ask for her "personal intervention in the issue of completing the gasification of our settlements, a tiny dot on the map of Ukraine where only 450 people live. We ask at the state level to legalize the issue of the receipt into the local budget of the main taxes of 'Lvivgazvydobuvannia,' in particular the fee for environmental pollution and the fee for geological exploration work. \n \nWe also insistently ask that the issue of conducting an independent expert assessment to study environmental safety be resolved. Employees of the relevant gas industry services take measurements and assure that hydrogen sulfide emissions are within the norm, with which we categorically disagree. Since the field was put into operation, the number of patients (including children) with hypertension, heart and allergic diseases in the territory of our villages has significantly increased. Conducting such an expert assessment will give us the opportunity to raise the issue of granting benefits, because we are in the zone of emission of harmful substances." \n \nReference: \nFive years have passed since the opening of the first launch complex of the Lokachynske gas field. At that time, it was also envisaged (and this is recorded in the relevant documents) that the settlements located in direct proximity to the field would be gasified first. The distance from the field to the village of Markovychi is 1.7 km, to the village of Mizhhiria – 1 km. The gas field is operating at full capacity, an installation for purifying gas from hydrogen sulfide has been put into operation at the field, and an autonomous power station has been installed. However, there is still no gas in the villagers' homes. \n