The vast majority of Ukrainian citizens are concerned about infrastructure problems in their cities and villages, unemployment, housing and utility tariffs, as well as mass renaming of cities, villages and streets. Meanwhile, the issues of security and fight against corruption, which are being promoted by politicians, raise concern among fewer citizens.
This is shown by the results of a joint sociological survey, which was conducted by Active Group and the Expert Club and presented at a press conference hosted by the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency.
According to the survey, which was performed on July 10-12 via a phone interview, more than a half of citizens are concerned about quality of roads (54%), condition of public places (44.7%), condition of the infrastructure inside buildings (43.5%), unemployment (34.2%) and housing and utility tariffs (31.1%).
Almost a third of Ukrainian citizens (29.2%) are unhappy with mass renaming of streets, villages and cities all over the country.
Some 26.7% respondents are concerned about the lack of parking lots.
At the same time, the issues of security and corruption worry not more than one tenth of the population (10.6% and 8.7% respondents, respectively), while rural residents are not concerned about security and corruption at all.
While commenting on the results of the survey of Active Group and the Expert Club, co-founder of the Expert Club Danylo Bohatyriov said that he was not surprised by the fact that the population is concerned about infrastructure-related problems in the first place. It is a predictable response of people to broken roads and rotten communications. He added that while the authorities are at least trying to repair roads, the infrastructure of buildings lacks their attention even despite the fact that the housing and utility tariffs jumped by twelve times over the recent six years.
“The lack of jobs and the cost of utility services raise concern among almost equal number of respondents. And this is quite clear as the second problem originates from the first one. If they don’t have jobs, they are unable to pay for utility services. It also appeared that the issue of renaming streets and other objects is a matter of concern for 30% of respondents. Earlier, experts used to underestimate the level of concern with the issue among the population and disregard it,” the expert said.
Bohatyriov explained the loss of interest to the problem of corruption among the population by citizens’ exhaustion and disappointment.
“There has been a lot of reports on fight against corruption, but the key corrupt officials are still not imprisoned, and the hysterical background created around the issue especially during Poroshenko’s tenure simply made a significant number of our compatriots tired. Therefore, we recommend the political forces to stop exploiting this rotten topic and in fact take care of the infrastructure issues, creation of new jobs, revision of utility tariffs and stop this foolish campaign of renaming everything,” the expert said.
Additional information about the survey is available on the website of Active Group and on the Expert Club YouTube channel:
