Andrii Martens, road sector expert, Serhii Harus, head of the Ivanivska AH, Serhii Pinchuk, chairman of the Lyubech village council, Oleh Levchenko, director of Vinnytsia LGDC, and Volodymyr Kulishov, head of the Hnivanska AH, spoke about the Ukrainian municipal roads, roads of local and national significance, as well as decentralisation processes in the road sector on the air of the "Modern Hromada" programme at the Ukrainian radio.

- What are the types of roads by significance and in which subordination are they?

Andrii Martens: They can be divided into three main categories. These are roads of general use of state significance, roads of general use of local significance and municipal roads of cities and settlements. There are about 240,000 km of municipal roads in our country, after decentralisation we have about 50 thousand km of roads of state significance and 120 thousand km of roads of general use of local significance.

- How has the state of roads changed after decentralisation?

Serhii Harus: During two years of our hromada’s existence, we have completed major repairs of 3 km of roads with new asphalt cover. And the current patching is approximately 700-800 square m per year.

Serhii Pinchuk: Our hromada is only one-year old. It has municipal and local roads. Our roads do not correspond to the name "roads", they are directions. Together with the heads of the Chernihiv Oblast hromadas we initiate that the roads along with funding are handed over to hromadas.

Serhii Harus: Oblast state administrations are interested in whether we need to repair roads or not, but rely on letters from rayon state administrations.

- Mr. Kulishov, are your hromada’s interests taken into account when drafting a road repair plan at the oblast, state level? And what have you managed to renovate with your own efforts?

Volodymyr Kulishov: The leadership of the Vinnytsia Oblast holds meetings and is always interested in the state of our roads, and accordingly thinks how to repair them or build new ones. Thus, last year we reconstructed a new road 15 km long. This road did not vanish along with the spring snow, and we see that the whole country has the same tendency: all main roads are repaired. Of course, there are many problems on the roads of state importance, but there are many shifts in this direction.

Oleh Levchenko: The hromada will not repair the road of national importance, since they are incompetent, it is impossible to control it. It would be more effective to give a certain level of authority to perform these works, while include all levels in control and approval of the work done.

- What can local people do to change this situation, if the state does not pay attention to the problematic road?

Andrii Martyn: First of all, they can contact the oblast administrations and ask them to include the road they are concerned about to the list of roads.

- Why is the quality of roads so different, if in theory the money is equally allocated to all oblasts?

Andrii Martyn: Different quality is due to different contractors in different oblasts.

- How did you choose your contractor and did you have to apply for warranty repairs?

Serhii Harus: We selected contractors through the Prozorro system, the relevant criteria are the price, quality and performance guarantees.

Serhii Pinchuk: We are a young hromada, thus, so far we are only conducting a competition and choosing a contractor.

Oleh Levchenko: Execution, distribution of funds, and control should not be kept in one pair of hands. There must be a division of powers and then there will be a system.

Volodymyr Kulishov: We had to apply for warranty repair – these are isolated cases, but there were no problems with that, the warranty contractor has repaired everything.

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