The electoral campaign, which will start within a couple of days, will contain a big dose of populism. Being aware of this fact, we consider that we must avoid these petty, populist slogans and focus on the need of a real improvement of the state of things in Chisinau, by taking into account the current realities.

If I become mayor, I intend to set up a task force capable to make an expertise of the state of things in the entire city administration, including of economic, cultural, scientific, and education problems, service sector. The city will become a true economic, cultural, scientific, and university centre of Moldova after implementation of this programme (within 4–5 years).

I avoid notions such as “flourishing”, etc. in my proposals because the Moldovan capital will evidently develop only if necessary living standards are available to all the citizens of the country, and this is unreal including for a near future. However, I think that the goal to ensure a normal living to residents of Chisinau can be reached, and it must even become a key purpose. Speaking about insurance of a normal living to Chisinau residents I mean first of all:

1. protection of Chisinau residents against higher prices of services, in particular of public services;
2. improvement of police activity;
3. making the city clean and comfortable;
4. adoption of all decisions by city hall in line with legislation in effect, norms on justice and social moral;

I consider that a normal living for Chisinau residents can be obtained through some immediate actions, which:

• Firstly, would improve the economic condition of citizens, especially of representatives of socially vulnerable categories, and this means growth of incomes in parallel with reduction of costs, including of public services.
• Secondly, would improve the environmental conditions in houses and in streets of the city.
• Thirdly, would ensure a qualitative, civilised service by municipal agencies and service providers.

This is the slogan of the day. Unlike the “four-year plan” of Vasile Zgardan, I do not propose utopian scenarios, but I declare with all my conviction that I wold start working for accomplishment of these three objectives immediately after investiture in office and I would continue the same way throughout my mandate.

Following are the key tasks in this sector:

Economy

1. Reduction of prices of main consumption products and tariffs for widely provided services, starting with public services;
2. Rise of salaries, especially for people who earn low salaries, and growth of pensions for most elderly;
3. Creation of new jobs;
4. Repairing of roads in the entire city;
5. Creation of repairing, building and drawing businesses, as well as environmental, territorial improvement and arrangement, and entertainment enterprises;
6. Modernisation of cleaning installations;
7. Creation of conditions for all farmers in order to help them sell their production without intermediaries and speculators in markets and fairs in the city; organisation of a network of municipal food markets for the same purpose. Establishing of the producer-buyer circuit wold allow farmers, agricultural producers to sell their goods without difficulties, while townsfolk would benefit from lower prices than at present;
8. Recovery of the collection-processing branch (canneries and necessary infrastructure), which will lead to a higher number of jobs and larger collections to the municipal budget.

Some hypocrite persons nickname the job seekers as “labour reserve army”, but the lack of jobs is a tragedy and a national shame. We must not accept such a state of things or be satisfied with illusory solutions resulted from “tekuchka kadrov” and daily economic activities, which mainly unfit the interests of jobless people. That’s why an intensive and coordinated creation of new jobs is required, which would fit the real needs of the city and its citizens. The employment service would be subordinated to this purpose, and it would be reorganised and hold necessary equipment, in order to become a true body capable to improve the life of the city through constructive efforts.

We must rely first of all on own forces in order to solve the lots of problems faced by the city:

• budget of the city;
• investments from local commercial banks;
• investments from businesses;
• deposits of population under the state guarantee regarding their maintenance and growth.

Following actions are needed to reduce the costs of services and to generally improve the living standards, to enhance the comfort and city arrangement:

• creation of a single municipal system for insurance of the city life — insurance with energy, gas, water, heating, sewerage, repairing of dwelling fund, communications and roads, evacuation of waste, etc. This purpose must be based on a network of enterprises, which would represent a single trust or concern and would be controlled and coordinated by the municipal administration. The burden of public payments will grow as long as these enterprises maintain their present statutes of joint stock societies (SA), being subordinated to unknown bodies, facing mutual debts and permanently confronting each other. This situation is convenient only to bosses of these enterprises who focus to obtain as high as possible profits and neglect the interests of the city residents, while this phenomenon challenges higher public tariffs. Therefore, a detailed analysis is needed to find out where the money of townsfolk (paid with regularity in spite of economic difficulties) is disappearing, and to make order. The creation of an urban administration, with necessary equipment, well-ruled, and much more economical is the best solution, rather than to try to improve the existing “market” system, when the rise of prices for services does not guarantee the quality of provided services.

Education, science and culture

• a 50-percent rise of allocations for education, science and culture;
• real autonomy for lycees and secondary schools based in the city requires own bank accounts and accounting for these educational institutions. This way, teachers would be paid at work, they will have possibilities to choose the destination of additional funds from financiers, parents, etc. Thus, the administration would legalise the granting of additional material aid to teachers in dependence of quality of final knowledge and results. The administrations of educational institutions would own the supplementary means, getting rid of guardianship of parents’ committees;
• distribution of land fields for individual construction to all workers in science, education and culture sectors;
• possibility to contract long-term credits for construction of apartments and private houses from the municipal bank;
• a 30-percent salary rise for teachers and artists in dependence of wages on the republic.

Arrangement of city life

An adequate awareness of what is going on is needed in order to establish the necessary actions. Most of Chisinau residents are unsatisfied with the condition of apartments, courtyards, streets and roads, headquarters of different non-commercial agencies, which are very necessary to everybody (clinics and hospitals, schools and kindergartens, post offices, etc.), and with the quality of services provided by these institutions. All of them are unsatisfied and revolted that our city had turned into a chaotic mixture of doubtful commercial and entertainment institutions. All citizens observe the catastrophic degradation of the culture of city, including of labour, consumption and leisure. There is an impression that there is no more room in Chisinau for goods producers, and there is place only for businesses working in the “sale-purchase” sector and amusement industry.

This is an abnormal phenomenon! Only a small percent of citizens in our city own luxury automobiles and spend their time in casinos, restaurants, bars, amusement centres and saunas. However, there is a tendency to anticipate these unhealthy demands, and this fact creates unbearable conditions for most of residents of the capital. It is complicated in some places to cross the street and even to walk freely on pavements full of stalls, booths and parked cars. This situation cannot be tolerated anymore: hundreds of thousands of city residents, including elderly and ill people, are hardly handling the situation, but they do not have possibilities for a calm rest, to walk without risking their lives or nerves, they are deprived of possibility to hide from this strange lifestyle even in own apartments. There is an impression that the city was stormed by a barbarian horde which mock at townspeople. I think that the municipal authorities are capable to make order in their own city, to oppose the lots of automobiles on pavements, to prohibit loud music and drunk voices near residential districts, to ban the construction of bars and restaurants near schools and kindergartens, and of filling stations near hospitals and residential blocks. No exceptional actions are needed to improve the state of things. The principle of measure must be simply taken into account when everything is in the right place, while freedom of some people must not affect the rights of others. The time claims a reasonable lifestyle!

However, it is not enough to admit that there is a lot of room for associated disaster in our city and an insufficient attention is paid to goods-making work, there are too many amusement clubs and very few providers of services accessible to people. There is an abundance of luxury supermarkets, expensive restaurants, bars, workshops and beauty saloons, and very few markets with accessible prices, repair workshops, coffee houses, while refectories had disappeared.

This disproportion must be repaired. If I become mayor of this city, I will organise the work in order to optimise the city infrastructure. An ample reorganisation would be needed for this purpose, a media campaign to inform the small- and medium-sized business representatives, proposing them real alternatives till development of their firms, with an adequate stimulation system. This is a feasible plan. This way, for example, with the interested assistance of the city hall, many “elite” coffeehouses, bars and restaurants, which are often empty, may become much more profitable and really useful to society like express coffeehouses or accessible refectories.

The street conglomerates of vendors in the Chisinau downtown and its districts require a distinct attention. Arbitrary markets flooded the city and spoiled its reputation, with Chisinau looking like a Gipsy tribe or even an abandoned building site. The lots of vendors annoy the townsmen on one hand, while on the other hand functionaries of inspection services, police and rich traders

“protect” the crowds of poor people who have to practice the street trade in order to survive.

The trade requires order and closure of the chains of “booths” and others of this kind. We live in an epoch of increasing contrasts between defying luxury and growing horrible poverty. All the districts of the city are studded by ultra-modest residences of the poor after shining facades and shop windows of “abundance of market economy”. Such a state of things has nothing in common with the normal development of society. We hold evidence that a social minority is becoming rich by robbing directly or indirectly the majority.

A lamentable situation is registered in the housing building sector and renovation of social infrastructure. At present, about 95 percent of youths who want to create a family do not hold the least chance to purchase apartments or even one-room flats. The free economic zones, telephone stations, and other social services have degraded. At the same time, luxury villas are being intensively built at the outskirts and in the historical centre of Chisinau, and nobody lives in many of them, very large but unsolicited and useless offices are being constructed.

These discrepancies can be eliminated through a wise management of public affairs. For this purpose, first of all, the municipal employees must honestly do their work, and this fact is possible through introduction of a strict control. The recent case of illicit sale of more than 1,000 land fields in Chisinau is known, but the justice “was lost” through wall of the city hall and corridors of the central administration, so that no authors of this illegality and corruption mechanism were identified so far. I consider that the mayor who will stop such illegalities will deserve the gratitude of townsfolk and I am ready to work in this regard. We have a lot of luxury buildings and a lot of homeless citizens — this is the reality of our capital. The city needs the elaboration and implementation of a housing building programme for common people, not for elite, and first of all for homeless people, for citizens who earn low salaries. No means for accomplishment of this plan will be available as long as our administration is developing after chaotic, financial-parasitical principles. The methods of tackling of economic management problems of Chisinau must be radically modified. Elsewhere, we must outline that the authorities of city hall and even of Chisinau do not hold unhindered possibilities to organise a normal and fair social living of the city. Many initiatives mentioned above will face legislative barriers and executive practice of sector, municipal or state functionaries. Our typical market business and interests of businessmen will also lay obstacles. However, the share of municipality is high enough and the city hall holds enough levers to influence the high-ranking circles of the power, including the legislature. I intent to use all these levers in order to improve the state of things.

Nowadays, it is a sin to spend huge amounts for swashbuckling and “prestigious” projects, to organise holidays and jubilees, when a large part of population suffers a true hunger. Holidays and jubilees have their goal, of course, but we must take care of true joys of people, of their permanent welfare, not of holidays. Me personally, I am not troubled over the lack of a European-style stadium in capital, as this is a natural thing for our poverty. I am much more troubled that all the sport fields in courtyards of our city had been destroyed that physical training and technical creation courses accessible once to everybody had been replaced by disco clubs, Internet clubs, and fitness clubs. The social, education and cultural insurance complex was destroyed. It’s time to gather the stones from here.

Service sector

I regard the qualitative and civilised servicing of citizens by municipal agencies and service enterprises as a priority of the city development. Our retirees must not queue for hours at savings banks and post offices to receive their money. The people must not make crowds in corridors of different institutions, which often have no seats, at passport offices, technical inventory bureaus, in social insurance institutions, etc. WE must not tolerate anymore the situation when “the boss is always right” while the citizen who raises a problem is treated like a cadger. Also, the need of many papers, documents, which are often useless, must be revised.

The quality of services provided to citizens and functioning of these institutions in Chisinau must be the object of some sociological investigations, which would be used as ground to draft a concrete action plan. The creation of a new city development technology must start here. Asked how I would ensure a normal life to Chisinau residents, I give a short and clear answer: through a reasonable management mode, saving of finances, attraction of supplementary means from commercial banks and businesses interested in development of our city.

A reasonable and wise management is needed, with a strict record of incomes and spending to the city budget, it is necessary to collect minutely taxes and other payments. Further, we must strengthen the real sector of urban economy — goods producers, which would allow the creation of the already forgotten social consumption funds, and redistribution of social estate, so that to facilitate a successful development both of trade, and of social-economic sectors. All these actions can reduce the discrepancies between prosperous minority and poor majority of population.

Many checked levers can be used to accomplish this goal, from fight against large profits of big business to indirect regulation of economic processes. Care of entrepreneurs and chiefs regarding socially useful activities of own enterprises, growth of number of jobs, improvement of work conditions, and salary rises — the city administration must encourage all of them. I mean both the reduction of taxes and other budget payments, and the need to really encourage the establishing of commercial and economic ties with other enterprises, branches, regions, and countries. The city hall must work the same way with businesses, obtaining instead lower prices for social consumption products. On the other hand, large finances can be raised through stoppage of illicit economic activities, and legalisation of illegal business. Nobody counts these financial means today, nor they are part of any plans and forecasts, though the illegal business holds minimum one third or even almost 50 percent of the general economic circuit of our republic, according to estimates of specialists. This index is valid for Chisinau, too.

Summarizing the main theses, my electoral programme calls for optimisation of work and creation potential of our citizens through an enhanced care for them, for their lives and daily activity. We must not forget that workers, those who produce real goods, not investors, parties, power, administrators or managers, generate the evolution of life. The human solidarity is capable to create the impossible, if people are confident in own forces and, respectively, the creative energy of society is present. I am fully confident that this is the only way to ensure a normal living to Chisinau residents, and this is a realistic plan and, even more, the unique one that can be implemented.

With respect for citizens-electors of the Chisinau municipality,

Gheorghe Sima,
candidate to the post of mayor-general of Chisinau,
leader of the Labour Union Patria-Rodina

 

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