Municipal services in Chernihiv: not everything is bad, but it could be better

On September 9, 2014, the Clean Politics press club held a presentation of the results of monitoring the provision of municipal services in Chernihiv in the field of urban passenger transportation, as well as water supply and wastewater disposal.

Activists of the Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights studied the quality of individual municipal services provided in Chernihiv as part of a regional project. Similar studies were also conducted in Dnipropetrovsk and Ternopil.

The monitoring coordinators chose two positions – urban transport, as well as water supply and wastewater disposal. As a result, both positive and negative aspects were identified.

“In the field of urban passenger transportation in Chernihiv, the objects of monitoring were, in particular, the presence of information signs at public transport stops, the level of compliance by carriers with the posted traffic schedules, and the proper arrangement of public transport stops,” said Nataliya Piddubna, a lawyer at the Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights. “So, 3 bus and 1 trolleybus routes were selected that connect different districts of the city. Among such routes were buses No. 8, 15, 37 and trolleybus No. 1.”

The processed data indicate that drivers and carriers generally adhere to the approved schedule. There are, of course, minor delays, but in general the schedule is adhered to. There are some comments regarding the behavior of drivers and the technical and sanitary condition of transport.

For example, some drivers talk on the phone and smoke while driving, open the door when the bus has not yet stopped, do not pull up to the curb, do not issue tickets, stand at the stop for a long time, do not announce the stop. As for the technical condition of the vehicles, some of them have torn seat covers, dirty windows and floors, and there are no handles on the seats, which violates the “passive” safety of passengers. As for the condition of the stops, there are 457 stops organized on the city’s routes, 101 of which are equipped with pavilions and canopies for waiting for passengers. 121 stops have complexes with shopping kiosks. In general, the stops meet the requirements of passengers, but, unfortunately, there are still some that need to be improved.

As for services in the field of water supply and wastewater, today the Chernihivvodokanal Commune of the Chernihiv City Council is one of the best water supply enterprises in Ukraine, as it extracts water from artesian wells, and therefore the water from underground horizons belongs to environmentally friendly drinking water of the highest quality and does not require additional chemical treatment, purification or chlorination.

As part of the monitoring in the field of water supply and wastewater, the quality of water and the technical condition of the networks were studied. And here too there are problematic points. In particular, significant wear and tear of the water supply network leads to large water losses. There is practically no scheduled repair of in-house water supply and wastewater networks, which creates a threat of environmental problems, especially in houses whose age exceeds 30 years.

In fact, building water metering equipment is installed only in new buildings, the percentage of installed metering devices in apartments remains small compared to other cities in Ukraine. At the same time, in recent years, the number of accidents per kilometer of the network, both water supply and sewage, has decreased. Despite problems with financing, the Chernihivvodokanal KP carries out both scheduled and current network repairs.

According to Natalia Piddubna, such a study was conducted in order to work out the methodology for public monitoring of municipal services. Now it can be applied to any service provided by local governments both in Chernihiv and in other regions of Ukraine.

The project “Implementation of public control over the activities of local governments of Dnipropetrovsk, Ternopil and Chernihiv regions in the provision of municipal services” is implemented with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation and the World Bank Representative Office in Ukraine.

The project is implemented by the Dnipropetrovsk Coordination and Expert Center for Regulatory Policy () Dnipropetrovsk.

The project partner in Chernihiv region is the Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights ().