The most transparent spheres in Khmelnytskyi are the information on work of local authority bodies, access and public participation and education. These spheres have earned about 4.5 to 5.0 points. This has allowed Khmelnytskyi to take the 14th place in transparency rating of 100 cities of Ukraine and earn little bit more than 41 points for transparency out of 100 possible. The research was conducted by the Ukrainian branch of global network Transparency International with The Institute for Political Education. Top cities were ranked according to 91 indicators in 13 spheres including budget process, human resource issue, public procurement, availability of online services and other.
Regarding transparency, Khmelnytskyi is a B student. The city does not have absolutely closed spheres and in general has shown decent results. If the local authority and activists will make every effort, then Khmelnytskyi can emerge as an A student in near future and even can show results comparable to European.
The most important thing to focus is the housing policy. It has earned 0.5 points. It means that information on the sphere is almost absent, only map of repairs is functioning. Also quite closed is the sphere of communal property (1.5 points). An electronic auction is not used for selling and leasing of the property, a list of communal property has not been published. The sphere of public procurement has also earned the same number of points. Amongst other factors the city needs to place information on actual purchases in the open data format and information about the results of biddings for the last three years.
The establishment of ProZorro.Sale system will help to improve the sphere of communal property, as it has been already done by Mariupol. The system allows quick and most expensive selling of communal property. Cities, which established it, have immediately substantially increased their points in transparency rating, the head of the Transparency International Ukraines project Building Transparent Cities in Ukraine, Kateryna Tsybenko, mentioned.
Of course, the 14th place in rating among 100 is a positive result. But it worth not to forget that even leading cities have proven to be semi-closed, because their results are not exceeding 60 points out of 100. On the official resources of the city council, it is very hard to find enough public information on the housing policy, communal property and procurements, although these spheres are extremely important to the city inhabitants. There are also questions to winning spheres. A negative thing is the practice of city council fail to comply with legislature on publishing draft proposals of regulatory acts, absence of timely publishing of already adopted acts. There is no access of citizens to the meetings. Part of discovered violations could be easily and quickly amended now, Alona Bereza, the leader of the non-governmental organization Zhinochyi antykoruptsiinyi rukh, has underlined.
Transparency International Ukraine and the Institute for Political Education are ready to cooperate with the authority and local activists of Khmelnytskyi, and to propose their recommendations and advices on increasing transparency of the city. Because at this moment the process of power de-centralization is going on in the country, at the same we should not allow de-centralization of corruption.
The project Building Transparency in Ukrainian Cities is supported by the United Nations Democracy Foundation.
Contact for media: Olha Tymchenko, Head of Communication Department Transparency International Ukraine
Phone: + 38 050-352-96-18,
E-mail: tymchenko@ti-ukraine.org
Transparency International Ukraine is a national chapter of Transparency International, an anti-corruption NGO with over 90 national chapters; which operates in more than 100 countries. TI Ukraines mission is to limit the increase of corruption in Ukraine by promoting transparency, accountability, and integrity in both the public authorities and civil society. You can learn more about the organizations activity on the website www.ti-ukraine.org