Yakutia’s town of Lensk is envious of Chechnya

The first house from those ones built in the Yakutia’s town of Lensk after the flood, collapsed. To tell the truth, this could have been expected. Unfortunately, the Gosstroy of Russia (the State Committee for Housing Construction) failed to meet the demonstrative regime, when the whole of the country aimed at reconstruction of the 246 houses of the Yakut town within the shortest terms.

Much has been spoken and broadcast on TV about the quality of the houses built in Yakutsk. “The happy new settlers” refuse to inhabit the new houses: the inside temperature does not go above five degrees centigrade even at the hardest frost, heaters broke in most houses after the first frosts in the town. Floors break, and cracks on the walls leak. In a word, the conditions do not suit for living.

At the same time, Gosstroy has fixed s a great cost value – 10 000 rubles (over $300) per one square meter in the documents. It is to be taken into consideration that not houses for rich people, but ordinary blocks of flats are meant in the situation. But Gosstroy has also failed to confine itself in the previously fixed norms, - one square meter costs 13 500 rubles for the state. Over 100 criminal cases have been instituted in connection with misusage of the state funds appropriated for restoration of Lensk. It means, one case falls on every 2,5 houses.

If we look closely at the central construction organization, Gosstroy, we will see that people, who has not been connected with the construction industry before, are prospering in the organization now. For example, Ilya Zaslavsky, an infamous first-wave democrat, is now one of the deputies of the Gosstroy leadership. It is not clear, how he has appeared there.

Certainly, Zaslavsky’s connection with the construction of the houses in the settlement of Marfino in the Mytischi district (the Moscow region) has affected the quality of the construction. Now the dwellers of the houses piquet the highways leading to Moscow with the hope to restore heating and electricity supplies in the houses.

The officials of Yakutia would be extremely happy to be flooded again, when all evidences of their dealings could be destroyed. This would allow them to expect the same powerful flow of financing like in Chechnya, where the cycle “restoration – blasting” never ends.

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/01/30/36342.html