Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin gives a thumbs up during a welcome ceremony at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky city airport in August, but had no answers about where the funds for a new hospital had gone.<\/span><\/div>\nAleksandr, who said he worked for a company involved in construction at the site, said the company didn’t get paid for much of the work it did. “We managed the site in 2011 and 2012 — it was preparatory work. We built the entire drainage system under the current structure, prepared building platforms…. Our contract was for 200 million rubles, and we received an advance,” recounted Aleksandr, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.<\/p>\n
“After that, however, I had to sue to get the rest for the work. And this was what happened to almost all subcontractors. Two firms even went bankrupt,” he told the Siberian Desk of RFE\/RL’s Russian Service.<\/p>\n
How alleged graft has crippled the project may be best illustrated by the case of Karpenko, who resigned from his post in December 2018 and faced bribery charges two months later.<\/p>\n
He and his accomplices were accused of conniving with a businessman to sell a building to the city for 46 million rubles ($625,000) — double its assessed market value. Money used in the purchase allegedly came from funds allocated for hospital construction. Karpenko, who still awaits trial, faces 12 years in prison if found guilty.<\/p>\n
‘They Just Changed The Billboard’<\/strong><\/big><\/p>\nFew debate the need for a new hospital in Kamchatka. The old complex comprises 11 buildings erected between the 1950s and 1970s. In 2003, the complex was deemed an earthquake risk. Plus, the fact buildings are scattered pell-mell makes the logistics of care complicated.<\/p>\n
The Kamchatka Health Ministry now says the new regional hospital will be completed by 2023 and it has established a new directorate to oversee the project. But there is no concrete construction timetable and the ministry did not respond to queries from RFE\/RL for details on how the project will proceed.<\/p>\n
Given the past problems, few locals in Petropavlovsk appear hopeful they will see any new facility soon.<\/p>\n
“What hospital? There is no health care on Kamchatka,” Yelena Golovachenko said. “And if there is any, then it’s not much. And a new hospital won’t solve anything. And when will it be completed? That’s the question. The girders have been standing for many years, money for its construction is handed out every year. It’s not hard to guess where all those millions have gone — everyone steals.”<\/p>\n
“People here have two choices: they can go to the mainland for treatment, or travel somewhere else,” she said.<\/p>\n
Others complain about the lack and level of current services.<\/p>\n
“We need specialists, but they don’t come here, and the equipment is outdated. If you go to the employment bureau, most of the vacancies are for doctors. And those specialists that are here end up working at private clinics. Getting an appointment to see an in-demand specialist can take months,” said another local resident, Anna Bryukhanova.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at the construction site, nothing seems to have changed except for a new billboard with photos of what should one day stand there.<\/p>\n
“I drove by recently, just out of curiosity after the election of a new governor — nothing has changed,” Kubanov said. “I honestly wasn’t surprised. They changed the billboard about the project as if they only started construction in 2020, although plans were made back in 2011.”<\/p>\n
Written by Tony Wesolowsky based on reporting by Yekaterina Vasyukova of the Siberia Desk of RFE\/RL’s Russian Service<\/h6>\n\n
This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia \u2014 Back in 2012, Valery Karpenko had good news for the more than 300,000 residents of Kamchatka, one of Russia\u2019s remotest regions, famous for its pristine\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,4,23,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4271,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4270\/revisions\/4271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}