- October 14, 2013
- 211
Zdzisław Palewicz: Our youth speak Polish, Lithuanian and Russian correctly
‘We know such cases when an unemployment person lives in a beautiful house and has a great car. The flats in Soleczniki are expensive but the rate of registered cars is high – that means people have money’ – said to zw.lt Zdzisław Palewicz, Mayor of the Soleczniki District Municipality.
Mr. Mayor, as far as we know, the Soleczniki District is currently introducing into practice several important projects. One of them being the rebuilding of the Soleczniki centre.
The Soleczniki District Municipiality has been realizing 56 projects between 2007 and 2013 for the total sum of 100 million Lithuanian litas. It’s a large sum of money invested in the infrastructure and buildings’ renovation. Thanks God we have done a lot. We’ve almost come to an end now but it occurred that there are some major projects at the end. One of them is the rebuilding of the Soleczniki’s centre. This is the project worth 6 million litas and within its framework the whole centre will be renovated. Also we’re going to renovate the Municipiality’s building, the school street and the school stadium.
Will the project be finished this year?
No, this year we’ve just started and we are to have finished in 2015. We had some problems, sometimes the bidding is won by the companies which don’t have money. We have a winner already who is going to start working. We hope the work will be finished in time. We also plan the renovation on the Stanisław Moniuszko School of Fine Arts and the centre of Ejszyszki, where the monument of the January Uprising’s insurgents is going to be set up, with the opening ceremony in spring next year. The renovation on the Jaszuny palace and park is a big project, too. A lot is being done and I’m happy for it.
The next important project of the municipality concerns biofuels. Could you tell us more about it?
The crucial problem is the heating price. It is high, unfortunately, and we have to reduce it. We’ve worked out a programme for reducing the prices and to do it we have to exchange the whole district heating system. The boiler rooms have to be changed in order to use biofuels. We took part in the projects organized by the Department of Energy. We have won two of the projects and we hope one of them will help us reduce the heating prices.
Do you know already how much the prices are going to be lowered?
Now we pay 29 cents and it’s pretty much. If we carry out what we’ve planned, we’ll pay 5 cents less. Still, it won’t be the lowest price in Lithuania.
Do you make the comparisons with other regions?
We have such comparisons. There are of course regions where the prices are lower. They started using biofuels earlier there. Our situation is not the worst but currently we are placed in the second half. The region is big, we have quite many boiler rooms which were built at the Soviet times. There are 20 of them in small towns. We use gas for heating what makes the price even higher. In Jaszuny or Dziewieniszki, for instance, the boiler rooms are big while there aren’t many inhabitants what affects the general price in the whole region. In Soleczniki it is 23 cents and in Jaszuny – 40 cents. Thus, to lower the price we must exchange the boilers and the district heating system. It won’t be fixed at once, of course, but we have a programme and the funds and that’s important. 50 percent of the funds must be paid by the municipality and it’s hard, but still, it’s a step forward.
In Lithuania the unemployment rate among young people is quite high. What is the situation in Soleczniki Region?
We don’t divide the unemployed into the young and the old. We analyse the general situation. I have to admit that the rate is very high and it’s currently at the level of 13 percent. To compare with other regions the situation is not the worst at all. When it comes to the young we are in the middle. The young do find jobs. A lot of them work in Vilnius so our unemployment depends on the economic situation of Vilnius. In 2007 economic condition of the country was different, there were only 3 percent of unemployed. Secondly, when we look for particular specialist, we can’t find them.
Why?
There is lack of skilled specialist here. We need a construction engineer, an architect, doctors and journalists. I would willingly hire such specialists but I just can’t find any. Whereas there are lots of management or administration graduates. There are many people who want to manage but very few to the specific job. That means something is wrong with educational system.
Isn’t it the issue of artificially overrated unemployment? A lot of people in the border regions, the Soleczniki Region also depend on, smuggle for living and an official status of an unemployed suits them..
We know such cases when an unemployment person lives in a beautiful house and has a great car. There are lots of such cases. As they say people ‘live by their wits’ here, in different ways. That’s good people think how to cope with these circumstances. I don’t analyse in the particular case if the money were earned honestly. I only want to emphasize that the flats’ prices are high. That means there is demand for houses. The other thing is that not paying attention to different crisis, we grant permissions for building houses every year. First of all, they are built by our companies but also there are some from other regions. We have 19000 cars registered per 35000 inhabitants so it’s a very high rate. What is more, it’s not scrap but good cars. That means people have money. The same situation is with the land. Today, there isn’t any free undeveloped areas in the region. I’m glad about it because the soil is being cultivated. The farmers use high-tech machines. That also means they have money. Unfortunately, there are disparities, too. There is a group of people who don’t want to work but live on social securities. That hurts. The whole system is here to blame because these processes are getting deeper.
80 percent of Soleczniki Region’s inhabitants are Polish but two local magazines are written in Russian. What does the municipality do to arouse the interest in Polish culture and language?
The regional government does a lot in this issue. People can see it. We organize quite a lot of concerts, some projects with Poland as well as the local ones. We do understand there should be more. All of these is culture: the meetings, concerts, press. That proves to be working because there are more and more people interested in these events. There are more and more children in the Polish schools. The Polish culture should be everywhere, so that people can see it, hear it, and want to participate in it. If we don’t do it, there will be someone else. Today it is Russian culture that is prevailing. Our region has always been multinational, but there is more and more Polish language here. Our youth speak Polish, Lithuanian and Russian correctly. A significant amount of them speak English, too. We want to preserve multinational character of the region and, at the same time, reinforce the position of the Polish language.
Tłumaczenie by Elżbieta Szafarz w ramach praktyk w Europejskiej Fundacji Praw Człowieka, www.efhr.eu. Translated by Elżbieta Szafarz within the framework of a traineeship programme of the European Foundation of Human Rights, www.efhr.eu.
