Recently, several "hot spots" have appeared in Odesa region, which are connected with obvious deviations from decentralization and hastily implemented territorial and administrative reform. Township oligarchs are trying to destroy decades-old industries, to eliminate the most important facilities for people - schools and hospitals, to suit their own interests, completely disregarding the opinion of the people living in the communities.
One of such tense places on the map of Odesa is the village of Tarutyne, before the recent reform it was the district center, where clouds hung over the Tarutyne Professional Agrarian Lyceum and the district hospital. Let's start with the lyceum - currently the regional government is trying to allegedly "unify and optimize" the property complexes of two professional agricultural lyceums of the Bolgrad district, located in Tarutyny and the village of Teplytsia, but in fact - to simply destroy the lyceum in Tarutyny, on paper joining it to Teplytsy.
The Vocational Technical School in Tarutyn, now the Agricultural Lyceum, was established in 1974. For a long time, vintners, builders, plasterers, welders, carpenters, masons, and pastry chefs were trained here. Every year, the lyceum graduated more than 500 specialists who came to study here from all corners of Odesa. Today, 101 students are studying in the walls of the lyceum, they are welders, carpenters, cooks and tractor drivers. The number of students depends on the regional order.
As told by acting director of the Tarutyn Agrarian Lyceum, Stepan Topal, in the academic year 2022/23, state support was cut to zero — the institution was not given a single place from the state budget, while the second agrarian lyceum, in the village of Teplytsia, received a state order for 120 places.
Local residents are sure that it is about the closure of the Tarutyn Lyceum, because without the support of the state, the Lyceum will not be able to survive. According to the head of the Tarutyn community, Savva Cherneva, the situation looks very strange, especially now, when the country is in dire need of people with working specialties.
"We live in an agricultural region and almost all technicians have always been local. Tractor drivers, welders, agronomists, viticulturists were produced by our native Tarutyn Lyceum (formerly PTU). Today there is a question regarding the closure of this lyceum. Not all children can enter institutes and pay contracts, but here they can get an interesting and necessary specialty for the country, and in good conditions. The Lyceum has a large technical base, a dormitory, a dining hall, and equipped classrooms. More than 40 people work here. We cannot allow these people to remain without work, and the country without high-quality specialists in the agricultural sector," he said.
In turn, one of the main supporters of the destruction of the agrarian lyceum, the head of the regional department of education Oleksandr Lanchak, insists that there is no money in the budget to maintain two lyceums. According to him, the merger of lyceums is connected with the "need to use state property more rationally and efficiently, freeing up financial resources in order to further direct them to the development of a multidisciplinary professional and technical educational institution." Moreover, the vacated premises of the Tarutyn Lyceum are offered for rent.
In general, the situation looks absurd - a lyceum in the village. They want to join Tarutina, the former district center, to the rural vocational school in Teplice, which is clearly the worst in terms of personnel training. In this regard, the local community blames the situation on the OVA department and directly on Lanchak — they say that he deliberately buried the Tarutyn lyceum, did not allocate funding, did not provide state orders for budget places, and thus it quietly died. If the Tarutyn community had not supported it with its own funds for the past two years, it would have already closed, but the head of the community, Sava Chernyov, found an opportunity to organize training for a group of 30 students of future chefs at the expense of the community.
The local community knocked on all the doors for a long time, visited the thresholds of various authorities, but all to no avail. The matter moved from a standstill only after they turned to their old friends - volunteers from the "Noble Cause" BF, who have long and fruitfully helped the community in a wide variety of issues. With the help of their connections in the regional council and OVA, volunteers began to look for mechanisms to solve this problem. It was possible to reach a decision on the creation of a special commission with the participation of the head of Bolgrad RVA Gennadiy Bambury and the heads of Tarutino and Teplitsia OTG. However, Gennadiy Bambura ignored this decision, the commission was not assembled, as a result, the authorities began preparing documents for the forcible unification of professional technical institutions.
Then the head of "Noble Cause" Serhii Shutov held negotiations with the acting head of OVA Boris Voloshenkov and he agreed to allocate two budget places to the lyceum for the 2023/2024 academic year. In this way, it was possible to extend the life of the lyceum for another year, but the problem did not go away, because then the lyceum would still be under threat of destruction. On the other hand, the community does not plan to give up, it is looking for investments, negotiations are currently underway with Odesa National Polytechnic University to sign a Memorandum of Cooperation with it.
Meanwhile, according to "ElitExpert" sources, the real reason for what is happening lies in the "covenant" of local clans. It is possible that the Lyceum became a bargaining chip between the authorities and ex-head of the council Serhiy Paraschenko, who lost his seat in the regional council and the opportunity to influence internal processes, and now, on the eve of the next elections, he is trying to strengthen his position. After all, everyone understands that educational institutions are mechanisms of influence on elections, they are election commissions. In this way, he tries to "overshadow" this sphere.
There is another hot spot in the same Tarutyn. They also decided to "reduce the rights" of the Tarutyn District Hospital - the only one in the district where heart operations are performed, making it a cluster - in fact, a branch of the Bolgrad Hospital. Another Bessarabian "master", People's Deputy Anton Kisse, fiercely fought for this, who also agreed on the "distribution of spheres of influence". No one took into account the fact that in this case, in the presence of serious diseases, Tarut residents would have to travel dozens of kilometers to Artsys or Bolgrad.
At the same time, the hospital is fully operational, the departments have the necessary equipment, heat and hot water. The chief physician of the Tarutyn hospital, Yurii Savitskyi, strongly requested and insisted on the preservation of the hospital, especially since the staff of the medical institution includes 320 employees - both experienced doctors and young specialists, and the institution has a lot of modern equipment - an X-ray machine, a digital mammogram, a wide-ranging laboratory, modern operating rooms and maternity ward.
In this case, the truth prevailed - thanks to the help of Odesa Regional Council Deputy Chairman Oleh Radkovskyi and the leadership of OVA, it was possible to change the situation, through Kyiv, they managed to preserve the "general" status of the Tarutyn hospital, but globally the problems did not go anywhere. In summary, we can say about the clear decentralization failures, as a result of which entire spheres of activity are broken at the knee for the sake of local clans, completely disregarding the opinion of people living in communities.
