vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #146 / Social life / Reading article...

While trash has continued to pile up around Vladivostok since July 1, doctors, garbage collectors and housing workers have been demonstrating at city hall and demanding back pay.

Saying he needed to “work the problems out himself,” Mayor Victor Cherepkov suspended Yuri Kopylov, the city manager, July 23. Kopylov — who has been blamed for the trash strike — is one of the few original deputies left since the mayor resumed office in September.

The doctors and teachers had already received a salary promise from Victor Kondratov, the president’s representative in Primorye and the Primorye head of the FSB, after a demonstration July 15 that got national media coverage.

But the trash collectors and housing workers face a more complex situation, since Kondratov has not stepped in yet. In an apparent attempt to centralize services, the mayor has refused to sign a number of municipal contracts and is trying to bring some under control of city hall.

Trash collection is a privatized monopoly, but the mayor hasn’t yet signed a contract with the colletion company, SpetsAvtoKhozyaistvo.

Garbage truck drivers struck in March, blocking the road to the city’s seaside dump. The workers then resumed work with a promise from Cherepkov to pay them. But SAK’s director, Nikolai Mozgovoy, said the money never materialized. After working six months without pay, the garbage workers stopped, saying the mayor owes them 13.5 billion rubles ($2.3 million).

“It’s not a strike — we’re simply not working,” said Mozgovoy. His company is continuing to serve those private businesses and condominiums that have separate agreements with SAK, he said.

The obvious result of this work stoppage, at least for city residents, is ubiquitous, ripe trash. It’s as though the smell around town is matching the lcity workers’ ire.

City sanitary officials are raising red flags over Vladivostok’s trash volume.

They say rotting garbage is responsible for 84 cases of intestinal infections and 31 cases of food poisoning. Outbreaks of infections resembling scarlet fever and tuberculosis have been growing since mid-July.

Meanwhile, over 2,000 elevator repairmen, building cleaners and apartment maintenance people, who have been waiting about six months for their salaries, will now have to work directly for the mayor’s office in order to get their pay, Cherepkov said.

The mayor says housing services will no longer answer to the five-district agency that used to oversee them. He accuses district agency management of corruption but says the city prosecutor will never bring them to court.

Thus, he envisions city hall overseeing stair sweeping, plumbing repair and building maintenance.

Maintenance workers won’t have it. Now on strike, they demonstrated in front of city hall July 21 and 22, calling for the mayor’s resignation and speaking angrily.

“How can they let us work the first half of the year and then say, ‘Thank you very much for your work, we s--- on you the second half of the year?’” said Galina Azimova, a union committee chairwoman. “The mayor won’t sign a contract with us because that means taking responsibility.”