Vladimir Putin signed a law that significantly increased fines for providers of housing and communal services if they are provided improperly.
Public organizations and human rights activists are asking the Ministry of Construction to introduce an automatic recalculation of the cost of housing and communal services in the event that these services do not comply with established standards.
Resource-supplying organizations have been punished with rubles before, but the amounts were ridiculous for them – from 1 thousand to 10 thousand rubles – and have not changed since 2007. It was often easier and cheaper for public utilities to dismiss complaints and pay a penny fine than to work honestly. On June 7, a law signed by Vladimir Putin came into force, according to which fines for poorly rendered services by resource companies increased tenfold.
According to the norms now established (the Administrative Code has been supplemented with a new article 7.23), a two-stage punishment system is being introduced: for the first violation, there will be a fine of 10 thousand rubles for officials, up to 50 thousand rubles for legal entities, and for repeated violations, the official will be fined by 30 thousand rubles, the size of the fine for a legal entity will increase to 100 thousand rubles.
Fines for housing and communal services suppliers that have jumped tenfold for not doing their job well, hopefully, will provide more serious consumer protection, but consumers themselves should have the right to an adequate reduction in fees for poorly rendered utilities. Moreover, according to public and human rights organizations, this should not happen as it is now – with a lot of obstacles, waste of time and nerve-wracking – but automatically. The International Confederation of Consumer Societies (ConfOP) has applied to the Ministry of Construction of Russia with such an initiative.
– As our survey showed, almost a third of Russians have noticed a deterioration in the quality of housing and communal services over the past year, – says Diana Sork, a lawyer at ConfOP. – We believe that this is a natural result of the fact that there used to be federal supervision in the housing and communal services sector, but now everything has moved to the local level. The quality of public services is controlled by services subordinate to municipalities, which, in turn, establish these companies.
In this system, citizens most often receive unsubscriptions in response to their complaints. What exactly do consumer advocates propose? Each citizen who owns property is charged a certain amount per month “for communal services”, and it just needs to be automatically divided by the number of days or hours, depending on the chosen recalculation mechanism, and the amount “minus” the services received is set in the payment. Suppose an accident occurs, and there is no heating in the house for two days – the cost of these two days is automatically deducted from the monthly bill for housing and communal services, and the networks with the management organization must then figure out for themselves who is to blame for the accident and who will answer for it in rubles. In addition, information about failures in the supply of a particular resource and their cost should be posted in open sources so that people can double-check whether everything was calculated correctly for them.
Any Russian who lives in an apartment building and receives monthly payments for an apartment and housing and communal services with huge amounts will be two-handed for the introduction of automatic recalculation for non-provided or disgustingly rendered utilities. Well, by God, why if a shapeless sweet mass was brought to you in a cafe instead of an ice cream ball, then you have the right not to pay for such a “treat”, and if you were freezing in an apartment with barely warm batteries in winter, you still have to pay in full, as if the heat was coming from the batteries? Why is everything so much more complicated in the housing and communal services situation?
You have to go through ten circles of hell to prove that the batteries in the apartment were cold, and the water was not at the temperature you pay for. Realizing that proving your case is not an easy and multi-step process, many simply dismiss what is happening, scold housing and communal services with all their might, but still pay for the joy of management companies. And it shouldn’t be like that! It should be logical and very clear: if you received a service, you paid, if you didn’t receive it, you didn’t pay. Let’s see if the Ministry of Construction adheres to the same logic and finds the courage and will to reconsider the mechanism for recalculating the cost of housing and communal services if they were not provided. So far, the construction department has reported that they have not received any proposals from public figures…
Elena Kazantseva.
Photo: Moscow Agency/A. Avilov.
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