While most of towns of Nizhny Novgorod Region adopted new system of mayor’s elections, Dzerzhinsk decided otherwise. Meanwhile chemical productions in the city experience serious problems. Organic glass producer doesn’t have enough resource to continue operations. Local ministries continue to support local industrial and food producers. Read weekly report by FederalPress.
While most of towns of Nizhny Novgorod Region adopted new system of mayor’s elections, Dzerzhinsk decided otherwise. Meanwhile chemical productions in the city experience serious problems. Organic glass producer doesn’t have enough resource to continue operations. Local ministries continue to support local industrial and food producers. Read weekly report by FederalPress.
Mayor’s elections
City deputies of Dzerzhinsk, second biggest city of Nizhny Novgorod Region, decided to leave the system of mayor’s elections unchanged. On December 3, 2009 they held an extra-curricular meeting and voted against new system of elections, when the mayor is appointed by the Duma deputies.
Although the decision seemed quite final, current mayor of Dzerzhinsk, member of United Russia, expressed an idea that the situation might change. However, last week City Duma deputies held another meeting, having only the draft city budget on the agenda. Thus, the general system of mayor’s elections stayed untouched. The elections will take place in October 2010.
Chemical industry
JSC DOS (Dzerzhinsk Organic Glass) is one of the township-forming enterprises. Its production facilities used to employ over 1500 people. The company produced special organic glass for aviation industry and hydrocyanic acid for chemical industry. However the production stopped in 2009 and stayed without operations for over 6 months.
Then the regional government achieved an agreement for drawing up investments to restore production. JSC DOS received a credit line from the Savings Bank of Russia, and investments from its chemical partner Korund JSC and United Aviation Corporation. The total amount of accumulated financial resources made 400 million rubles.
The governor spoke of ambitious plans of DOS to be able to reach full capacity of production by the third quarter of 2010. However, production of glass stopped again in November. Director of the enterprise was accused of tax dodging and paid 3.5 million rubles from the company’s account to cover this debt. As a result, DOS was not able to purchase raw materials to produce organic glass, its profile product.
The workers of the enterprise sent an address to the President and the Prime Minister of Russia asking for help.
Produced locally
Regional minister of industry and innovations of Nizhny Novgorod Region Nikolai Sataev opened a new exhibiting and sales point for local producers. The new site for demonstrating locally manufactured goods and selling them was organized on the premises of Nizhny Novgorod Technical University.
Regional government has been promoting locally produced foods and industrial products for years. Currently agriculture is under special control. Although there are enough chicken farms and poultry-related production facilities, meat industry has to buy meat from other regions. The number of cattle, meat and milk production dropped considerably in the past months. Therefore the government offers additional subsidies for those farms who still keep cattle. The task is to increase the number of cattle and try to reach the point when local products are able to win leading positions in the meat market of the region.
Anti-corruption measures
Interdepartmental commission on corruption prevention approved of the new rules for city administration employees. Starting 2010 officials in controlling, supervisory and financial positions will be obliged to present more detailed information regarding family members’ earnings, wages, and property. Mayor of the city Vadim Bulavinov will finalize the list of positions in the administration which will be required to undergo new procedure.
“Our task is to make our work transparent at maximum and to build legal bars for corruption”, the mayor noticed.