OREANDA-NEWS. February 10, 2009. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to consider at its sitting an issue on extraordinary situation in the city of Kyiv, as a result of the capital authorities’ activity, and evaluate the actions of leaders of the Kyiv city state administration on the issues of housing and communal service tariff formation.

This was stated by Minister of Housing and Communal Service Oleksii Kurcherenko at a briefing in the Cabinet of Ministers.

“Tomorrow, the Government will give a relevant response, and we are going to submit a proposal to the President of Ukraine and the Verkhovna Rada to consider an issue on performing by the Kyiv city authorities their functions and competence. If there are relevant grounds, I believe, the President can take a decision that mayor failed to perform duties of the KCSA head, at the least,” Oleksii Kurcherenko said.

According to the Minister, the Kyiv authorities’ actions have long been beyond the scope and, especially, as regards the housing and communal service tariff formation for citizens and enterprises of Kyiv, where the capital mayor has demonstrated his unprofessionalism and neglect of the citizens’ interests. 

“If we give legal treatment of the Kyiv mayor Mr. Chernovetskyi’s actions, all the current normative-legal acts - from the Constitution to the Government’s resolutions – have been broken while approving the housing and communal service tariffs in Kyiv,” the Minister stated, adding that Kyiv authorities have grossly broken, in particular, the norms of the Constitution, the Law “On housing and communal service”, the Government’s resolution determining the approaches of tariff formation for maintaining buildings, constructions and territories around buildings.   

Oleksii Kurcherenko is sure that actions of the Kyiv authorities should be a matter of court examination as well.

“I think that Kyiv is entrapped today, at a deadlock. That's impossible. It is necessary to do something, to prevent a halt of the city, to prevent a man-caused catastrophe,” the Minister stressed. 

Oleksii Kurcherenko has also disproved statements of the representatives of capital authorities, as if the Government obliges the Kyiv authorities to raise tariffs, calling them “provocative and unprofessional”.

The Minister noted that, in accordance with the Ukrainian legislation, the local authorities bear personal responsibility for raising housing and communal tariffs in the city of Kyiv. “The Ministry, unfortunately, devoid of opportunities to influence the tariff formation today,” he declared.