Russian opposition leader targets corruption, mismanagement in utilities
(Interfax – November 8, 2012) Moscow, 8 November: Opposition figure and blogger Aleksey Navalnyy has announced the launch of a new project, called RosZhKKh, for fighting corruption and shortcomings in the work of utilities and municipal services companies.
“It is common knowledge that ZhKKh (Russian abbreviation for utilities and municipal services) in Russia is a black hole that sucks in colossal funds. It is an oversight that the state has given ZhKKh up and nobody wants to get to the bottom of what is happening,” Navalnyy told Interfax on Thursday (8 November).
He went on to say that through the specialized RosZhKKh website people would be able to complain about the poor work of utilities and municipal services companies. “We all pay housing and utilities bills. One could try and get utilities and municipal services companies to go their work well. We pay for it,” the politician said.
“We ourselves encourage corruption in ZhKKh because we do not demand what we are entitled to. Our project’s first step is to set up a website through which a person can demand to be provided with services they have paid for,” Navalnyy said. He added that the website (http://roszkh.ru) had been working from Thursday (8 November) and in the first 90 minutes after its launch some 1,000 complaints relating to 83 constituent parts of the Russian Federation had been sent.
Navalnyy admitted that the new project was a substitute for state bodies of power that are supposed to ensure the smooth operation of utilities and municipal services companies.
“Our RosYama website is a pure substitution of the function that should be performed by traffic police, road services and state bodies of power. The RosZhKKh website is a typical example of people setting up a service that would have been superfluous and a duplication of effort if the bodies of power did their job well. But we have to do it, since the authorities are not working at all,” Navalnyy said. (Passage omitted)