One-way road: how social irresponsibility of some agricultural companies "kills"

Despite the fact that Russian aggression has united Ukrainian society in helping the army, sometimes it happens that someone, hiding behind high ideals, simply forgets about their social responsibility. A vivid example of this is the situation that occurred in one of the districts of the Chernihiv region.     

In words, everyone is allegedly very concerned about the fate of the road destroyed by the transport of two agricultural companies, along which an ambulance barely took a seriously ill elderly woman to a hospital in Nizhyn. But, apparently, no one is going to repair the road so that such a story does not repeat itself, writes UNN.

According to local residents, the road within which the settlements of Sidorovka, Berestovets, Komarovka of the Nezhinsky district are located is being destroyed by Kernel and Ukrainian dairy companies with their heavy transport.

People who need to go to work, or just on their own business, find it difficult to move along this road even by passenger transport. What can we say about regular and school buses, which are also forced to travel here and actually endanger their passengers on a daily basis

And it was on this road that the ambulance was taking a seriously ill elderly woman to a hospital in Nizhyn. The patient had a hemorrhagic stroke, so the count went not even for minutes, but for seconds. But the ambulance, going around solid holes and potholes, lost precious time, which could increase the chances of a woman's rescue.

The ambulance team still took the patient to the hospital, but a few days later she died in a medical facility.

It would seem that this egregious case should outrage the public, and make officials pay attention to both the road and the agricultural firms that destroy it.

But it wasn't that simple.

It turned out that the section from Sidorovka to Berestovets is a local road, and the region is responsible for it, and the section from Berestovets to Komarovka is of state significance, so it should be repaired by the restoration and Infrastructure Agency.

As the head of the Department of operational maintenance of highways of the Capital Construction Department of Chernihiv RMA Alexander Mysnik told UNN, they "patched up their road section on a large scale" in 2021. This year, the budget does not provide for road repair costs.you can only use the remaining funds from previous years, and this road is not included in the repair plans.

At the same time , the official admittedthat there is a problem with exceeding the weight of transport on the roads, but local authorities cannot influence this in any way, because there are no appropriate powers – this is the sphere of Ukrtransbezpeka and the police.

As a way out, to solve the problem, a representative of the Chernihiv RMA advised local residents to be more persistent, and even block the road.

"If people organize themselves, no one will stop them if they block the road for trucks. We had such situations in communities when people blocked the road. If the owners (of heavy vehicles) had a conscience, they would allocate funds for the community," Misnik said.

In turn, Komarovsky village head Viktor Bondarenko assures that several kilometers of the road between Berestovets and Komarovka are now in a terrible state, which means that all questions are sent to the Restoration Agency. He claims that he has repeatedly raised the issue of repairing this site.

But at the same time, the head of the Komarovskaya community actually justifies the agricultural firms that destroyed the road. According to his logic, the main thing is that they pay taxes to the budget.

"They drive those large-sized vehicles, but they fill it up, the road tax is included in the cost of fuel. That is, you fill up more – you drive more, you pay more taxes. We constantly communicate with these agricultural firms. They were able to take advantage of the benefit, for example, in 2022 and not pay us land tax, but they paid, I thank them for this," Bondarenko explained his point of view in a comment to UNN.

And what, in fact, are the agricultural firms themselves? At the time of writing, Kernel has not responded to our request regarding the situation.

In turn, the" Ukrainian dairy company " does not consider itself guilty of destroying the road.

As stated by the director of the Borznyansky branch of UMK LLC Igor Khlystun in a comment to UNN, they use the road because their farms are located nearby. And the problem , in his opinion, is not in transport, but in the fact that the road is poorly cared for.  Khlystun also admitted that he had never discussed with the regional authorities the possibility of repairing the road.

As Alexander Mysnik notes, these two large agricultural companies could join the repair of the road on the terms of co-financing. There are examples of such positive cooperation between socially responsible businesses and local authorities in Chernihiv region.

In addition, according to Misnik, it is possible to explore the possibility that Kernel and Ukrainian dairy company will independently finance the repair of the road.

The main thing is to have a desire, which, apparently, two large Ukrainian companies do not see from the word at all.

Of course, you can talk a lot about paying taxes, helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and so on. But every human life has value. Even if it's life on the scales along with the road you've destroyed that could have saved him.