President chairs a meeting on construction and improvement of multifamily housing services

    Uzbekistan 28 May 2021 3782

    On May 28, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev chaired a videoconference on the construction and improvement of multifamily housing services.

    Large-scale activity is being carried out in Uzbekistan to update the appearance of cities and villages, to create decent living conditions for the population. Over the past three years, housing for 155 thousand apartments with a total area of 41 million square meters has been commissioned. The number of apartment buildings has doubled.

    With the advent of new homes, modern housing estates, the relevance of their maintenance increases. According to surveys, 35 percent of residents of multifamily housing are not satisfied with provided services, and 65 percent said that they do not feel the work of partnerships.

    This is also because many partnerships are in a difficult financial situation. There is a low level of service and, consequently, trust in them. Despite the provided benefits, they do not cope with the timely repayment of loans.

    There are many cases of inefficient use of funds in housing and communal services, theft of budget funds. Over the past 2 years, about 100 officials of the sphere were brought to justice for corruption crimes.

    Priority tasks for improving the maintenance of multifamily housing and updating the housing stock were discussed at the meeting.

    It was noted that the maintenance of some areas will be transferred to qualified service management companies in the regional centers, as well as in Nukus, Chirchik and Angren cities, as an experiment.

    A rating assessment of the activities of these companies will be introduced. Companies with better service will get more facilities in the future. Round-the-clock reception centers will be organized in all management service companies.

    Another important problem is that in many cases, the debt of partnerships arises from an imbalance in the cost of services. From now on, the minimum set and standards of housing maintenance services will be approved by local councils in consultation with the population. At the same time, the territorial administration of housing and communal services will have to justify the tariff parameters point-by-point, holding a presentation of the planned works and services.

    Low-income families included in the register of social assistance will receive subsidies for mandatory payments for housing maintenance.

    The Ministry for Development of Information Technologies and Communications has been instructed to launch a single electronic billing platform for housing and communal services payments from October 1 this year.

    It was noted that 3 thousand newly built multifamily housing is not provided with maintenance services. The need was noted for creating management companies for their maintenance.

    “If there are no good housing conditions, there will be no peace in the family, productivity in work. I am most concerned about low-quality projects. If we eliminate the corruption factors in construction and strengthen control over the people's money in terms of its intended use, the result will be different”, the President noted.

    This year, it is planned to renovate 212 and complete the repair of 456 two-story houses in disrepair. In addition, this year it is necessary to repair 2.4 thousand apartment buildings, and in the next two years – 4.1 thousand houses.

    For this purpose, a special fund will be created under the Ministry of Housing and Communal Services to finance the repair of houses. Its funds will be formed from the national and local budgets in equal shares. This year, 220 billion UZS will be allocated for this purpose, and another 100 billion UZS will be raised from the funds of the population.

    Thus, 30 percent of expenses for the repair of apartment buildings will be carried out by owners, the remaining 70 percent – at the expense of the fund.

    Hokims of the regions were given instructions for the effective organization of activities on renovation and repair with the targeted use of these funds.

    The main attention was paid to the modernization of the heating system.

    15 thousand apartment buildings are connected to the district heating networks in cities. But 2 thousand kilometers of pipelines are in a state of disrepair, and losses in the networks amount to an average of 40 percent.

    In this regard, the task was set to connect more than 2 thousand apartment buildings to the centralized heat supply by the end of the year, having completed the construction and reconstruction of 56 boiler houses, repair of 205 kilometers of networks.

    “The purpose of building new multifamily housing in the form of a whole neighborhood is to save energy resources, reduce infrastructure costs. However, neither the ministry nor the regions have developed a unified approach to this issue”, Shavkat Mirziyoyev said.

    The importance of converting housing to a modern model of heat supply and involving the private sector in this process was noted.

    This year, 183 new residential areas are being built. 185 kilometers of drinking water supply networks, 290 kilometers of sewerage, 130 kilometers of electricity and 110 kilometers of gas supply networks will be laid to them. This requires 415 billion UZS and specific sources of funding have already been identified.

    Responsible officials were instructed to provide the neighborhoods with infrastructure.

    It was also noted that at least 3 thousand apartment buildings will be built in densely populated areas with high housing needs at the expense of a $50 million loan from the Asian Development Bank.

    It was instructed to simplify the procedure and reduce the time for issuing subsidies for the payment of the initial housing payment.

    Work on the improvement of territories and the development of social infrastructure was also considered. This year, 18 trillion UZS have been allocated to improve conditions in 7,794 villages and mahallas. Another $300 million was allocated to provide the population with clean drinking water, construction and repair of internal roads.

    The President criticized the progress of these projects and instructed the responsible persons to eliminate the backlog of projects and ensure their high-quality implementation.