Tariff for maintaining apartment blocks administered by municipal enterprises could be increased

The local authorities were given a month to identify possibilities of cleaning the stairs in the residential blocks that are managed by the 23 municipal companies administering the housing sector. They run 74.8% of the municipal apartment buildings at present. Chisinau Mayor General Dorin Chirtoaca expressed his dissatisfaction with the state of the stairs in multi-storey buildings, seeking proposals for better paying the personnel that sweep the respective stairs daily. According to Petru Gontea, interim head of the General Housing-Communal Division, the tariff of 0.67 lei is too small to cover the expenses of repairing and maintaining the stairs in blocks of flats. He said that given the present prices of construction materials, a tariff of 3 lei would be also small to achieve the projected results. Specialists of the municipal services estimate that the owners of two-room apartments should pay by about 9 lei each month. Gontea also said that the municipal enterprises that administer the housing sector experience an acute shortage of employees and the persons that maintain the apartment blocks make up only 10-15% of the necessary number. Among the causes are the general lack of labour force and of skilled workers as a result of migration and the low salaries. The municipal housing sector (3 504 residential blocks) is administered by 23 municipal enterprises. The Associations of Privatized Dwelling Owners run 613 blocks, the Condominium Associations – 9 blocks and the Dwelling Construction Cooperatives - 331 blocks. There are also 234 departmental blocks.