vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #148 / Social life / Reading article...

Ten special garbage trucks arrived in Vladivostok Aug. 13 from Moscow under armed guard, but they probably won't clean up the political mess from the city's trash.

Mayor Victor Cherepkov ordered the 500-million-ruble ($87,000 apiece) vehicles two months ago, although his press center denied the purchase when the Vladivostok News inquired mid-July. A spokesperson said the vehicles were purchased through a kind of barter agreement with the Moscow supplier.

The trucks, and 26 new city workers, will replace trash monopoly SpetsAvto-Khozyaistvo. SAK had struck for the month of July, as piles of garbage grew around town and rats and sanitation-related infections increased.

Governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko paid them six months of back pay owed by the city on Aug. 5. They were supposed to resume servicing city housing, but that is now in dispute.

City hall says SAK is not collecting refuse from apartment buildings and is only fulfilling separate contracts with private businesses.

SAK, meanwhile, says it is taking away trash but will stop as soon as the garbage trucks begin full-scale operations. The Vladivostok newspaper says the trucks are not compatible with the city's dumpsters, although the mayor's press center denies this.

As for the fact that SAK will no longer collect municipal trash although it received taxpayers' money, director Nikolai Mozgovoy replied, "Let's not count money. It's our business to count money, not yours." Last month, an "unidentified person" torched one of four garbage trucks sent especially from Bolshoi Kamen.