The problem is not just the negligence of construction and maintenance workers, thieves also steel covers and sell it as scrap metal.
Walking her dog along a Kyiv street in January, an elderly woman suddenly slipped down an uncovered manhole, receiving third-degree burns from the hot water flowing beneath.
Her dog was boiled alive. Many court cases later, there is still no one to take responsibility for that and many other accidents involving manholes left open without a warning sign.
The problem is not just one of construction and maintenance workers negligence: Thieves also look to cash in on the scrap metal.
The situation in Kyiv has become so severe that Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky called an emergency meeting in February this year to address the problem.
Larysa Gagenko, whose daughter Olena fell down the manhole, went through a long court case, and has now brought a civil case against the company involved.
She says the firm that was servicing the manhole, Universal Atlant, used schemes and falsifications – such as retrospectively firing the workers and saying they could not have been working there as they had already been sacked – to avoid responsibility.
Universal Atlant could not be reached for comment.
“It is the Kyiv authorities’ responsibility. They should be taking care of it.”
– Oleksiy Kucherenko, the former minister of housing and communal services.
“The problem with these cases is that people don’t know whom to talk to,” said Oleksiy Reznikov, a lawyer from Magisters law firm, who represents Gagenko.
According to Oleksiy Kucherenko, the former minister of housing and communal services, there are more than a 1,000 manholes in Kyiv.
They are owned by several different city departments and used by the private companies that these departments employ. Kucherenko said the relevant departments should replace missing manholes, and that ultimately the city is responsible for controlling the situation.
“It is the Kyiv authorities’ responsibility,” said Kucherenko. “They should be taking care of it.”
During a city administration meeting in February, Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky instructed all district administration heads to provide a complete list of information about the number and location of manholes, especially near schools, kindergartens, apartment houses, as well as the department responsible for them. It was obligatory to mention the responsible organization.
“Since the problem is Kyiv citizens injuries, I decided to take this situation under my personal control,” said Chernovetsky.
He ordered the report to be completed by Feb. 23. But many months have passed since then, and there is no sign of that report.
A spokesperson for the Kyiv City Administration told Kyiv Post that the person responsible for completing the report, Anatoliy Golubchenko, no longer works there.
The people now working in this area were not at the meeting, the spokesperson said.
“For any manhole cover sale two people should be punished with high penalties – the person who took the manhole cover and the person who bought it”.
– Oleksiy Reznikov, lawyer.
The administration did not respond to emailed questions.
But the city authorities’ indifference isn’t the only problem.
Manhole covers are often stolen and sold at scrap metal points. The Kyiv Post called nine scrap metal points across the city. Most of them declined to accept covers, but two agreed.
One said it would only take broken ones, but didn’t need any documentation or proof that the sale was legal. Another said it takes intact covers, paying Hr 1.50 per kilogram.
A regular manhole cover weighs around 53 kilograms.
“I think, there should be really severe rules for punishing the scrap points,” said lawyer Reznikov.
“For any manhole cover sale two people should be punished with high penalties – the person who took the manhole cover and the person who bought it. This problem is deeper than just one manhole or someone falling, it is the social problem of our city, because it’s our city that isn’t protecting its citizens and visitors.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Alexandra Romanovskaya can be reached at [email protected].
