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Delevoi Peterburg, April 15, 2003

YABLOKO Against Monopolists

YABLOKO opposes the amendments to the law "On the Basis of the Federal Housing Policy" adopted by the State Duma in the third reading and the arrival of large monopolies on the housing and communal services sphere.

At the end of last week the head of the YABLOKO faction Grigory Yavlinsky stated that this document would lead to a 100% increase in tariffs and did not provide for restoration of the housing and communal services sector.

All the main mechanisms enabling monopolists to increase prices for the [rental of] flats and tariffs for communal services are maintained in this law.

Yavlinsky also indicated that the introduction of such large monopolists as RAO UES (Unified Energy Systems) and OAO Gazprom merely represented a way of obtaining all the remaining funds and money available to the sector. This is the worst possible outcome for the housing and communal sector.

According to Yavlinsky, the crux of this approach can be summed up as follows. Owing to constant tariff increases, in particular electricity prices and pressures from rolling blackouts, make the whole sector a debtor of RAO UES; and then privatize the key structures of the housing and communal services sector and the whole infrastructure of the sector in general. Then people living in the flats will suddenly turn in debtors of RAO UES (once all the structures in the sector have been privatized by these huge monopolies) and be confronted by the recently adopted new law which stipulates that they can be driven out of their flats.

This will become first and foremost a tool of political pressure. "It is clear, states the newsletter from the press service of the YABLOKO faction, - that the regions with which RAO UES has concluded an agreement represent the largest electoral regions. This represents a means of obtaining political power in the country."

 

See also:

Housing and Communal Services Reform

Delevoi Peterburg, April 15, 2003

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