Budget Reforms Helps Luhansk Keep Clean
What could be more irritating than litter on the streets of your native city, especially if you have spent your lifetime trying to clean it up? “It is just impossible to win this battle all by oneself,” said Mariya Duda shrugging her shoulders.
Duda, a street cleaner from the State Communal Enterprise (SCE) in Luhansk, Ukraine, has devoted about 20 years of her life to this work. During this time she has seen how morning smiles have gradually vanished from the faces of Luhansk citizens hurrying to work as their eyes are caught by broken bottles near home entrances, litter tossed carelessly on the streets, and by the thick layer of dirt which covers the edges of the road. “This has been a long-standing problem and citizens complained a lot,” she added.
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Mariya Duda (left) with her iron “assistant”
Photo Credit: MBR |
Duda attributes the litter problem to the need for more street cleaning personnel and machinery. According to the SCE where Duda works, the city pedestrian and traffic routes of more than five million square meters are attended by only 267 employees. In the past, the SCE had sufficient machinery and financing available to care for just 30 percent of this territory. In addition, a fleet of special machinery and vehicles required extensive repair.
To remedy the problem, the Luhansk City Administration began working with USAID’s Municipal Budget Reform (MBR) Project in 2007 to implement Performance Program Budgeting (PPB) in the city. Utilizing this method, funds are allocated not to organizations but to programs, which are designed to solve priority problems of the citizens – clean streets being priority number one.
Using PPB, the Luhansk City Council managed to allocate 2,900,000 UAH to purchase special machinery for cleaning the streets and roads. This machinery is equipped with devices for automatically gathering the litter from streets and for cleaning drainage shafts. Two machines can work 24 hours a day and replace 60 employees engaged in street cleaning.
“Thanks to these new machines, we manage to clean a larger city area. For me, it is much easier and nicer to work. The city has become noticeably cleaner and its citizens happier. It is nice to see their happy faces and hear words of thanks,” said Duda with satisfaction.
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