Citizens ask the President of the Russian Federation to close the market between the landfill and the cemetery
The openly weak local government in the person of the communist mayor Anatoly Lokt, without reacting to the kicks of the prosecutor’s office, demonstrates a complete inability to restore order in the territory entrusted to them. In the country’s largest municipality, nestled between a giant garbage dump and a cemetery, is the Khiloksky food wholesale market, which has created a lot of problems for residents of neighborhoods located close to this “triangle.” With the connivance of the head of the city, their life has become hell, while the owners of Khilka declare a “fruit paradise” on the market square.
The development of an “effective format” of trade in the form of selling products from trucks, from boxes covered with dust from graves, in the aromas of exhaust fumes, is pushing fruit and vegetable retail outside the market. Along the road leading to Khilk, rows of assorted stalls and makeshift stalls have grown up, interspersed with various kinds of halal cafes and places where national food is prepared, and livestock is slaughtered here, local residents say (they find heads and other parts in their yards every day butchered carcasses, which attract stray dogs).
Shopping arcades are located directly under the windows of residential buildings. A guttural Asian dialect sounds all around, Russian speech is practically inaudible. Endless noise, din, specific rotting waste thrown out by traders into containers for solid waste. Stench and unsanitary conditions, rats, myriads of flies and midges. Thousands of migrants, hundreds of beggars, lovers of cheap drink, homeless people rummaging through overcrowded garbage dumps, crime, small and large… These are the fruits and vegetables.
Unable to withstand the local atmosphere, people are trying to leave. But housing, for obvious reasons, is cheap here. Some owners rent it out to Asian traders and rent others for an additional fee in more prosperous areas. In turn, tens of tenants move into small apartments, mini-warehouses with goods are set up there, and stalls on the street are connected to apartment electricity meters.
Security forces periodically carry out checks and raids, but hundreds and thousands of new ones take the place of expelled migrants and everything repeats itself.
In addition, every summer, deep burning of garbage occurs in a landfill adjacent to residential areas; residents of two districts of Novosibirsk on the left bank of the Ob River are suffocated by the smoke. Supervisory authorities have recorded blatant violations during the operation of the landfill, carried out, again, by the municipal enterprise Spetsavtohozyaystvo. However, the mayor turns a blind eye to this, occasionally scolding his subordinates under the guns of television cameras.
Back in November, the prosecutor’s office through the court ordered Lokt to establish a sanitary protection zone (SPZ) for the cemetery, within the boundaries of which Khilok would fall, which automatically means its closure – trading food in the SZ is prohibited. Acting contrary to the interests of Novosibirsk residents, the mayor’s office did not comply with the court’s decision and filed an appeal in February. And in May, it issued a permit to the Khiloksky market for the construction of five buildings. In whose favor is the red mayor playing?
Having won the election for the head of Novosibirsk with a record low turnout (just over 20%), Lokot is losing what remains of voters’ trust at the same record pace: claims against him are piling up, and he is unable to clear up the problems by showing political will. Even those that directly threaten the safety of citizens – Khilok still remains a headache for Novosibirsk residents and a black spot on the map of the metropolis.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
