An Irkutsk pensioner described the unbearable conditions in a dilapidated house: the dead plumbers were blamed

“A case has been opened, but there is no talk of resettlement”

A month ago, MK talked about a kindergarten teacher in the Irkutsk region who, since 2015, has been waiting to be relocated from emergency housing where there is no heating or water.

After our publication, the Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, ordered an investigation into this case.

Four plumbers, who at one time damaged the central heating in the house, were found guilty. But the problem is that those plumbers are no longer alive.

There is still no talk of providing the woman with new housing.

72-year-old Albina Smirnova lives in the village of Koblyakovo, Bratsk district. Since 2015, the woman has been waiting for relocation from emergency housing. All her life she worked as a kindergarten teacher, and in retirement she has to live in an apartment with collapsed ceilings and no radiators.

The woman went to court regarding relocation. She won the case. But local authorities ignored the court’s decision.

Albina Smirnova lives in a dilapidated wooden apartment barracks. There is no light in the entrance, rotten pipes, walls with fungus, a staircase that is about to collapse. In 2014, the water in the house was mistakenly cut off and the central heating in Smirnova’s apartment was disrupted. They couldn’t restore it. Since then there has been no heating.

We published the story of a pensioner. The next day, the press service of the Investigative Directorate for the Irkutsk Region announced the initiation of a criminal case under the article “Negligence”.

Investigators studied the documentation on the dilapidated house and interrogated officials of the district administration.

“But, apparently, you won’t get justice in our city,” says the pensioner’s granddaughter Alla. “The investigator opened a criminal case several times, and the prosecutor issued a decision to cancel it, saying that there were no negligent actions against the local administration. The Investigative Committee employees shrugged: we don’t understand what’s going on. On the fourth attempt, a criminal case was finally opened… against the plumbers who cut off the radiators in 2014.

But the fact is that none of those same plumbers are alive anymore. Some died during the coronavirus, some after.

“They were ordinary village workers,” Alla recalls. “When there was an accident in the house at night, boiling water poured out of all the radiators, my grandmother ran around the village to wake up the plumbers. The men tried to do something, but the batteries crumbled before our eyes, they had all rotted long ago, and that’s why they fell off. But the investigation twisted everything so that the workers cut them off illegally.

A search of the administration yielded nothing. They did not find a single supporting document saying that Albina Smirnova filed complaints.

– How so? Since 2002, we have been writing complaints,” Alla shows a pile of documents. – We have a whole folder with appeals, signatures and seals.

Now Albina Smirnova and her granddaughter were promised to be interrogated as witnesses in the case of those same plumbers.

“There is no talk about the need to move my grandmother from emergency housing,” says Alla. “In the first days after the commotion, they promised to restore heating in the house, which would soon collapse, but now there is silence. Now the main problem turns out to be who cut the batteries in 2014. The grandmother tells the investigator: you yourself saw that the doors and floors were tilted, the toilet was falling apart, it’s not safe to stay here. And they answer her: it has nothing to do with it.