Vitaliy Maletskyi, the mayor of Kremenchuk (Poltava oblast), blamed local journalists for the delays in the construction of a bomb shelter in a daycare during the 4 December Kremenchuk City Council executive committee meeting. His words were caught on the meeting’s livestream, reports Nadia Kucher, the Institute of Mass Information representatve in Poltava oblast.
During the meeting, reporters with Vizyt TV asked Vitaliy Maletskyi to comment on the fact that the bomb shelter in a Kremenchuk daycare has not been opened despite the promises. The mayor responded by criticising the journalists.
“Thanks to the work of your TV channel, ‘Transparency and Accountability’ (i.e. the procurement oversight group. – Ed.), and the work of some Kremenchuk City Council deputies affiliated with your channel’s owner, who are very chaste about deadlines, the regulatory paperwork, and everything else. Because of this, we have to work exclusively above board. And this drags out the construction in wartime,” said Vitaliy Maletskyi.
The mayor accused the Vizyt TV reporters of visiting the construction site to film a news story, saying that the construction crew refused to work because of this.
“You made it so the builders are afraid to work. They do not want to be frequenting the prosecutor’s office for the next three or four years, as some of our builders are now doing, because they worked faster than the standards require,” said Maletskyi.
In November, Taras Panasenko, chair of the Poltava City Council’s housing and communal services department, accused Poltavshchyna journalists of making an error when comparing the types of salt that the city planned to purchase.