Putin does not trust governors’ reports
Russia’s Prime Minister says Murmansk and Arkhangelsk are regions were people are most dissatisfied with the local government. He does not trust the governors’ own reports on their achievements.
The Prime Minister claims that reports from the regions on the governors’ efficiency are insufficiently objective and are often not in accordance with peoples’ real living standards:
- The mismatch between the paper realities and the way people in this or that region relate to these quasi achievements forces us to re-think the objectivity of the evaluations, Putin underlined according to RIA Novosti, and added that inhabitants in some regions judge the work of the local government as very low.
- Saratov, Arkhangelsk and Murmansk are in the middle of the ranking of regional governments’ efficiency, but the people judge the regional leadership’s work as “very, very poor”, he said.
Murmansk Oblast Governor Dmitry Dmitriyenko and Arkhangelsk Oblast Governor Ilya Mikhalchuk were two of 15 heads of Russian regions to be summoned to Kreml after the Duma elections on December 4. In both these regions United Russia did poorly compared to the results in the last elections in 2007. In Arkhangelsk Oblast the party got 31.9%, down from 56.7% in 2007. In Murmansk Oblast, United Russia got 32%, down from 55% four years ago.
In October 2011 President Dmitry Medvedev threatened Governor Ilya Mikhalchuk with dismissal because of problems in the public utilities sector.
Putin has ordered the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the Ministry of Regional Development and the Ministry of Finance to prepare new standards for evaluation of the efficiency of regional governments.
The new standards for measuring the governors’ work should be developed in close contact with the public, trade unions and business sectors, Putin said.
