Representatives of international donor organizations and the Ministry for Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine defined main directions for cooperation
The meeting aroused a significant interest on the part of its participants. In particular, Deputy Minister Oleksandr Mazurchak and Deputy Minister Olha Romanyuk and Head of Administration for Foreign Economic Activity of the Ministry Oleh Khusnutdinov arrived along with the Minister for a discussion with the donors.
The donor organizations were represented by the following: representatives of the International Renaissance Foundation, USAID’s Municipal Heating Reform Project, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, SIDA, NDI, РАСТ (UNITER Project), Eastern Europe Foundation, United Nations Development Programme and GTZ.
Oleksandr Popov defined in his speech the main directions for possible cooperation of the Ministry with the donor organizations. In particular, the possible cooperation concerned the following: conducting an educational and explanatory work among population regarding directions for reforming the housing and communal services system; support for development of the system of Associations of Co-owners of Multi-apartment Buildings; conducting reforms in the energy-saving sector; facilitation in improvement of the legislation that is necessary for successful implementation of reforms in the housing sector and the energy-saving sector etc. The Ministry is tasked to conduct a fundamental reform of the housing and communal services system and to mould responsible owners of housing. That is why it will be impossible to deal with this issue without donor aid. It is even more so since the country will have to conduct the reform under the condition of absolute budget deficit.
Representatives of donor organizations positively assessed the Ministry’s approach to conducting the reform. As participants’ presentations demonstrated, each donor institution deals with issues of reforming the housing and communal sector to this or that extent. However, it was obvious that the level of activity coordination of donor organizations representatives between themselves and with bodies of the state authority is still extremely weak in this area. Therefore, summing up the results of the meeting, Executive Director of the International Renaissance Foundation Yevhen Bystrytsky offered a number of proposals regarding improvement of the communication and elaboration of a joint agreed action plan between the participants who found support on the part of the attendees.
In particular, it was decided that such coordination meetings would have to be conducted on regular basis (the next meeting is scheduled for the second half of June). Also an agreement was reached that in the near future representatives of donor organizations would have to submit their generalized proposals regarding further activity plans in the housing and communal services sector for 2010-2011 and possible directions for their own cooperation with the Ministry. Representatives of the donor organizations gratefully accepted the Minister’s invitation to participate in the work of various working groups that are being created within the Ministry for working out separate directions for reforms and to participate in roundtables for the purpose of their discussion.
The participants of the meeting expressed their gratitude to the leadership of the Ministry for Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine since Oleksandr Popov and his team demonstrate high level of openness and readiness for a dialogue with civil society representatives.
