UNDER COLLATERAL — CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS

Road repairs in Lutsk are difficult. This is precisely what the scandal of two years ago was connected with, when the city authorities decided to give part of the premises of the "Promin" cinema and the Palace of Student Youth as collateral to banking structures. A more than original option. Lutsk was then preparing for the All-Ukrainian Conference on Public Amenities, so in order not to be disgraced before all of Ukraine, the city authorities turned to the enterprise "Lutsksvtodor" with a request to perform quality repairs of the road surface. The title list included 27 streets and avenues. To carry out the corresponding works, it was necessary to find 5 million hryvnias, which were not in the budget.

On May 21, 2003, the city council adopted decision No. 8/1 on granting the enterprise "Lutsksvtodor" a loan in the amount of 5 million hryvnias secured by part of the premises of the "Promin" cinema and the Palace of Student Youth. However, the city prosecutor's office filed a protest against such a decision of the city council, motivated by the fact that LLC "Lutsksvtodor" is not a communally owned enterprise, so the executive committee had no right to act as guarantor for the loan repayment.

As reported by the deputy prosecutor of the city of Lutsk, Mykola Biliak, since no response to the protest was received within the 10-day period established by law, the prosecutor applied to the court with a statement to recognize this decision as illegal and to cancel it. On February 8, 2005, the Lutsk city-district court granted the prosecutor's application. The appellate court of the oblast subsequently left this decision unchanged by its ruling, and it entered into legal force, although today it is being appealed by the executive committee before the Supreme Court of Ukraine.

Despite such "sacrifices" on the part of the city authorities, it was not possible to repair even half of the roads that were on the approved list. As noted by the head of the supervisory board of CJSC "Lutsksvtodor," Yurii Olkhovyi, the banks refused to provide 5 million under such collateral. "Lutsksvtodor" managed to take out loans for a total sum of only about 2 million 300 thousand hryvnias. With them, it was possible to repair only the central city avenues and streets — Vidrodzhennia, Voli, Molodi, Rivnenska... The repairs, claims Yurii Vasyliovych, were carried out with quality.

One of these loans, notes Mr. Olkhovyi, was fully repaid back last year, the other is being repaid according to schedule. Therefore, there are no grounds for concern that the "Promin" cinema or the Palace of Student Youth will be taken by the banks. Although this scheme "came back to bite" "Lutsksvtodor": for the use of loans, the enterprise paid almost 600 thousand hryvnias in interest, and the customer of these works — the Department of Housing and Communal Services of the Lutsk City Executive Committee — never fully settled with them for the work done. As of September 1, 2005, the DHCS owed CJSC "Lutsksvtodor" over 4 million hryvnias, including almost 2 million hryvnias — for work performed in 2003.

GOOD ROADS COST DEARLY

The issue of the state of roads in the city has been repeatedly raised in their appeals by activists of the public coalition "Lutsk European," who initiated the project "Europe Begins with Roads." They are surprised: why was over 80 percent of the targeted funds from the city budget that were used for the reconstruction, repair, and arrangement of road surfaces in 2003-2004 allocated specifically to "Lutsksvtodor"? After all, such works are carried out exclusively on the basis of a tender, which the city authorities allegedly did not announce.

The situation was clarified by the commercial director of CJSC "Lutsksvtodor," Vitalii Poshtaruk. According to him, in such cases it is not a local but a nationwide tender that is announced, about which an announcement is published in the information-analytical bulletin "Visnyk Derzhavnykh Zakupivel," which is issued by the Ministry of Economy. The results of tenders are also published there. Today, "Lutsksvtodor" is the only enterprise in the oblast that has a nationwide license from the State Construction Committee of Ukraine and a laboratory certified in the UkrSEPRO system according to the international quality standard ISO 9001-2001. As the most successful enterprise of this profile in the region, the CJSC mostly wins tenders for carrying out such works in Lutsk.

According to Mr. Olkhovyi, they have won tenders in Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr... Today they have advantageous offers for cooperation in Lviv Oblast and Rivne Oblast. Their "trump card" is a patented technology for producing cold asphalt mix, which can be effectively laid even in rain and at sub-zero temperatures. Another "highlight" is split-mastic-asphalt, for which they provide a guarantee of 10 or more years. These are exactly the kind of roads that should be laid, Mr. Olkhovyi is convinced.

It is clear that the latest technologies cost corresponding funds. In Lutsk they cannot pay for them, so "Lutsksvtodor" is forced to develop other regions. This year, they claim at the enterprise, they began working seriously on Lutsk roads only with the onset of August. Because if in Lutsk they want to make roads "cheaply and angrily," that is yesterday's approach.

STREETS NEED PASSPORTS

Finding out whether CJSC "Lutsksvtodor" is asking too much for its services turned out to be no simple matter. As explained by the head of the department of the Road Service in the oblast, Mykola Nastin, calculating how much a square meter of asphalt costs on average in the city and whether the money recorded on paper was actually invested in it is practically impossible under existing conditions. A calculation can be made only for some specific section of road surface. At the same time, a number of factors must be taken into account, and the "prehistory" must be known — what exactly repairs this surface underwent in the past. The situation would be significantly simplified by the passportization of streets, which would also enable operational control over the quality of the work performed.

In response to the deputy inquiry of members of the "Lutsk European" faction in the city council regarding the passportization of streets, on June 16 of this year a response was received signed by deputy mayor Leonid KyryLchuk. In it, in particular, it states: "At present, the Department of Housing and Communal Services has ordered documentation from the technical bureau 'Cadastre' for the passportization of all streets of the city, which will indicate the number of streets, their length, city networks, road surface, number of manholes, grates, etc."

As reported on this matter by the director of the enterprise "Technical Bureau 'Cadastre,'" Oleksandr Kholodkov, they indeed received such an order, studied this issue, prepared their own technical vision of the problem, and submitted proposals to the customer regarding the implementation of the project. Unfortunately, the work stopped there: the customer showed no further interest in this matter... It is clear that in the near future no one will carry out the passportization of streets, and therefore it will not be possible in the near future to control how much money is actually buried in asphalt and how much is written off.

Oleksandr PYROZHYK

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