Kremenchuk journalists complain that communal enterprises only give them comments through the City Council press office

Kremenchutsky Telegraf (Poltava oblast) reports that the administrations subordinate to the City Council refuse to talk to journalists directly, instead advising them to contact the Kremenchuk City Council press office, writes "Kremenchutsky Telegraf".

"We wanted to ask the head of the transport department, Ruslan Ivashyna, whether in our city there have been cases of territorial staffing center (TSC) employees checking citizens' documents, as was the case in Poltava the other day, but we were faced with a refusal instead of information, yet again," the editors noted.

Upon requesting a comment, the media outlet notes, they received a response from Ruslan Ivashyna, saying, "We have rules: send all your questions to the press office and then we will answer them."

The media outlet notes that their team has faced such incidents before: the journalists have already asked Mayor Vitaliy Maletsky about the tacit ban on any comments, in particular from the heads of communal enterprises.

The newspaper writes that, as the Mayor explained, "communal enterprises are a matter of the city's livelihood. Communal enterprises are inseparable from the city, from the city authorities, from the mayor."

According to Maletsky, "Because whenever you write comments about bad roads, you never mention a single communal enterprise director, but you do mention the mayor. Therefore, any questions to communal enterprises and any problems related to their work – please, send them to the mayor. The mayor will decide, give the directors certain mandates regarding the answers and, without intruding in the work of the communal companies, correct them so that they do their job efficiently, so that everything goes smoothly."

IMI lawyer Roman Holovenko notes: "Although redirecting journalists to the press office complicates the communication process, commenting to the media is a person's right, they are under no obligation to do it. It would be a different matter if we were talking about requests for information."