Days After Protest, Minnikhanov Gives Pensioners Back Unlimited Rides
Bus companies complain that they struggle to pay their staff salaries pay their salaries because of the massive number of free riders. Kira Maslova/KH.
16 January—On Friday, 13 January, in a meeting with Tatarstan Prime Minister Ildar Khalikov and Minister of Transport and Road Construction Lenar Safin, President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov reversed a controversial recent decision to limit Tatarstan pensioners to 30 free rides per month on public transportation.
Minnikhanov overturned the ride-capping decision—which had been announced by Minister of Transport Safin on 24 December 2011—in light of “multiple appeals by citizens,” reported Tatarstan Presidential Press Service.
The bulk of the appeals Minnikhanov is referring to came on 9 January. More than 1000 people gathered in Kazan’s Ploshchad Svobody to protest the decision, which became effective on 1 January, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, although Interfax reported the number of protesters to be “about 800.” The protest was organized by a local branch of the Communist Party, but members of Yabloko and A Just Russia were also reported to have participated.
Protesters at the rally carried placards reading “The Elections Are Over, Are You Trying To Rob Us?” and “Free Public Transport For Students,” reported Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Photographs taken by Komsomolskaya Pravda showed placards expressing anger directly at “chinovniki” (government bureaucrats): “Chinovnik, remember that you are a future pensioner” and “Take Away the Chinovniki’s Foreign Cars—Give the Pensioners Back Their Benefits!”
Minnikhanov’s directive sent the Tatarstan Government back to the drawing board to find money in its budget to reinstate the unlimited ride program. Currently more than 1 million people, the majority of which are pensioners, are members of the benefit program.
When announced in December 2011, the decision to limit the benefit program to 30 rides per month was hailed by government officials and businessmen alike as a sound managerial move. Public transportation by bus in Tatarstan is largely contracted out to private providers. Each year, the republic sets aside a fixed amount of money for these companies to subsidize the free ride program, an arrangement not amenable to the bus companies, who claim that they struggle to pay their staff salaries because of the massive number of free riders.
In 2011, 2.5 billion rubles were set aside for the benefit program, but even so the bus companies lost 1 billion rubles because of the unlimited ride program, Minister of Transport Safin explained when he announced the now-repealed ride cap in December. To appease the companies, the ministry had decided to set aside 3 billion rubles for the program in 2012 and limit each program participant to 30 rides per month.
Besides being financially sound, the ride cap would also have made public transport more “transparent and civilized,” as the bus companies would have begun to treat pensioners—who they now view as freeloaders—with more respect, Business Online quoted Safin as having said.
Metro News Kazan noted in an article today that Minnikhanov’s decision to repeal the ride cap came after Russia Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spoke out about unpopular laws requiring licenses for fishing, a pastime many Russians believe should be free.
