Russia may cancel fines for citizens who repair roads at their own expense without waiting for utility services. The relevant legislative initiative is being developed by the State Duma of the Russian Federation amid cuts in budget expenditures on road infrastructure. This was reported by the Foreign Intelligence Service, writes UNN.
The State Duma of the Russian Federation is working on a legislative norm that would allow not fining Russians for independent repair of highways. Currently, if citizens, on their own and with non-state funds, decide to fill a pothole in the yard or repair a section of road without waiting for utility workers, they can be fined 5–10 thousand rubles under Article 12.33 of the "Code of Administrative Offenses." For legal entities, the punishment is even stricter – a fine of up to 300 thousand rubles
Against the backdrop of rising costs for the war against Ukraine, the government of the Russian Federation is reducing funding for road activities, including the construction and repair of federal highways. By order of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, spending on maintaining the federal road network this year will be cut by 11 billion rubles, and next year by another 20 billion. Total funding for road works over the next six years, within which it was planned to build and reconstruct over 2,000 km of highways, will decrease by 100 billion rubles. That is, the wait for repairs may drag on even longer.
Also indicative is the desire of Russian officials to manipulate numbers. Based on last year's results, "road workers" reported an increase in the volume of road construction and repair by 14%, which in total amounts to 28,000 km. However, only 220 km of new federal roads were built from this volume. For comparison: China lays new roads at a speed of 750 meters per hour, which equals about 26,000 km per year.
Thus, Russian lawmakers are opening a new era in relations between the state and citizens. Russians are simply allowed, "from the master's shoulder," to independently perform the functions of state services where the authorities simply "lack" money to care for people. Next in line for such "self-management" could be the housing and communal services sector. According to expert estimates, the large-scale underfunding and shortage of funds for modernizing the housing and communal services infrastructure in the Russian Federation already amounts to 4.5 trillion rubles