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WEEKLY ROUNDUP 

02 марта, 00:00

On Mondays the Kharkiv Oblast Administration press service holds briefings to which it invites local decision-makers. This time journalists were addressed by general managers Hryhory Maliuk of the Malyshev Mechanical Engineering Plant and Oleksandr Zhdanov of the FED industrial association. They were told interesting facts: to fulfill the Pakistan contract, the Malyshev plant staff has introduced over a hundred amendments into the T-80UD tank design, while FED revised last year the range of its products - aircraft and tank equipment - by half. It is in general good when an enterprise starts making new things, but a 50% revision shakes it. This usually boils down to a hectic search for orders. Now the Pakistan contract is coming to an end. What then? The Malyshev plant knows how to make good diesels and harvesters, and FED manufactures photo cameras and drilling devices, but their peacetime products do not find buyers in Ukraine, for the consumer is broke. Mr. Zhdanov reported his enterprise was going to revise its range of products by over 60% this year. He called it a survival program. Who could have thought formerly that the target of Ukrainian industrial elite interests would drop so low - to the survival level?

On February 23 the Kharkiv Oblast Administration was picketed again. This time the placards were held by City Council deputies, not the underprivileged. At the same time, the great hall hosted the fifth session of the Oblast Council which debated the oblast budget. Under this principal economic law, Kharkiv, concentrating more than half the oblast population, is to get 223.4 million hryvnias from the joint budget, i.e., only 31% of total expenditures. According to Mayor Mykhailo Pylypchuk, this will barely suffice for public-sector wages and the central heating of hospitals, schools, and kindergartens. There is no money for public transport and streetlights, let alone construction development and procuring new streetcars and trolleys.

The oblast received 470 million hryvnias - half the required amount - from the state budget. But the city was authorized a third of this half, with one vote against and two abstaining. The picketing did not help. Many City Council deputies put this decision down to the fact that, under the election law, such a large city is represented by only two deputies in the Oblast Council.

Last Saturday a beggar was walking down a suburban train. He was not so old and bore some vestiges of erstwhile culture. He addressed passengers soberly and very specifically: "My fellow citizens! You see a most rank-and-file, drab bum. I don't know how to sing or sob. I'm simply hungry. I'm not even asking for money. Any chance for a piece of bread?" After fumbling in my pockets, I reached out for him with a 5-kopeck coin. The beggar gave me a long and shrewd look. Feeling embarrassed, I squeezed out a joke: "I'm giving you a loan. When I have to beg on the train, you'll return it." Then I thought that in this country the saying "Begging is not excluded" has become decisive, along with "We have what we have."

It's time we changed folklore!

By Mykhailo BIDENKO, The Day, Kharkiv

Выпуск газеты №:

№8, (1999)

Section

Day After Day