During his political career, the Mayor of Chisinau Dorin Chirtoaca made a multitude of electoral promises. The authors of a new Sic! article made a selection of the mayor’s wildcat schemes that weren’t pun into practice, some regrettably, while other fortunately. The article is accompanied by an animated video, IPN reports.
Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca raised the issue of stopping of passenger transporting minibuses only in stations in 2014, during a transport crisis after which the minibus drivers asked for higher fares. Since 2014 until now, no change in the practice of stopping at request has been witnessed. The minibus drivers stop practically everywhere to take passengers in and leave them, endangering their life and the life of other traffic participants.
The mayor promised in 2015 that the inhabitants of the capital city will be able to travel by trolleybuses outfitted with electric batteries up to the Chisinau International Airport. Moreover, the urban transport in Chisinau was to turn into a regional one by the launch of the Chisinau – Odessa route. Belarusian trolleybuses with electric batteries assembled by workers of the Chisinau Electric Transport Company were to be used for the purpose. These ideas weren’t implemented.
In 2012, Dorin Chirtoaca enumerated crowdedness in minibuses as one of the biggest problems of passenger transportation in Chisinau. The mayor’s statements were supported by the police by raids that brought 156,000 lei fines during one week. The sum collected annually from minibus drivers for this violation exceeded 1 million lei.
Dorin Chirtoaca proposed attaching a red ribbon in minibuses to delimit the special area earmarked for a particular number of passengers. It is 2017 already, but the minibuses travel without ‘red ribbons’ and crowdedness remains a problem.
The interactive board for tourists was another initiative abandoned by Mayor Chirtoaca. Even if the installation of this board was supported by a number of private partners of the Chisinau City Hall, the board stopped work in a short period of time. It had stayed nonfunctional in front of the City Hall for several years and was taken away without explanations in 2015.
The waste processing factory is another promise mentioned by the article authors. According to them, all the large and medium-sized cities in Europe sort and process waste at specialized factories and make a profit from this business. Mayor Chirtoaca supported a number of initiatives to build such a factory, but this wasn’t erected despite the interest expressed by foreign investors.
The underground parking garage in the Great National Assembly Square is another undelivered promise. In the election campaigns of 2005 and 2007, Dorin Chirtoaca also promised to build such a garage in central Chisinau, but this wasn’t constructed even if the municipal administration authorized the erecting of office buildings in the center of the city and this led to a higher demand for parking places there.
“Will the list continue? The mayor should fight corruption in the City Hall. He should bring about changes by promoting a new generation of politicians who studied in Europe. He should stop the demolition of monuments, enforce the public transport schedule and implement electronic ticketing, a GPS system, stopping only in station sand should fulfill many other electoral and contractual promises. As one said: “This wasn’t decided because we do not yet have, I cannot say what, but I tell you sincerely that this should have existed,” says the article.
The full article in the Romanian language can be found on sic.md. Sic! is a project implemented by IPN News Agency with support from the Soros Foundation Moldova.
