January 20, 2003	Monday	Ziqa'ad 16, 1423

MOSCOW: Minus 48 centigrade is cold even for a Russian winter, but what has pinched this year is not as much the cold as the breakdown of the heating infrastructure in many areas of the North.

Unfortunately the situation has not improved yet, President Vladimir Putin told a Cabinet meeting. He ordered more financial aid to the worst hit areas by January end.

Close to 300 residential buildings in north-western Russia, housing more than 28,000 people are still without heating, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry. Aging systems have collapsed under the very low temperatures and heavy snowfall.

Kola peninsula on the border with Norway has been the coldest, with temperatures falling to minus 48. Army technicians brought in mobile power stations to heat some buildings. In some areas like Karelia, Komi and Novgorod, people are still waiting for heat.

In the face of growing public resentment, authorities in Karelia have launched eight criminal investigations against local officials suspected of negligence leading to the heating crisis. An investigation has also been opened in Valdai city in the Novgorod region, the RIA news agency reported.

Officials convicted of negligence can be fined up to 90,000 rubles (2,800 dollars) or sentenced to six months ‘correctional labour’. Lyubov Sliska, deputy speaker of the State Duma, the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament, told the TVS channel Tuesday that negligent officials should face five-year sentences.

The north has suffered most, but unusually low temperatures this winter have left thousands of people without light or heat throughout Russia.

The cold brought with it a reminder that Russia’s infrastructure needs massive investment if breakdowns must be avoided. The Physics Research Institute in St. Petersburg headed by Nobel Prize winning scientist Zhores Alfyorov has been without heat or water since late December. The cracked pipes provide one more proof that water expands when it turns into a solid, Alfyorov said.

Many of today’s problems have arisen from the central heating system installed during Soviet days. Now even a minor pipeline failure can leave thousands without heat. These systems which pump massive amounts of hot water into buildings are also wasteful, and expensive to maintain.

The state subsidised upkeep of these systems earlier. But money for maintaining these systems, or replacing them with more efficient systems, is hard to find in new capitalist Russia.

Fuel supplies become a critical need in such cold, but this has been a winter of chronic shortages in remote northern areas. In some areas sewage has frozen in toilets, and maintenance workers have struggled to thaw out frozen pipes.

Historically, the north-eastern regions of Russia were a place for exile. Now many residents who feel exiled are leaving for a more friendly climate. More than a million people have left these regions since the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991.

Questions are raised before every winter whether the north can keep its 12 million people warm. The difficult answers the winter brings have meant that at places up to 30 per cent of people have moved out, according to Family, an NGO (non-governmental organisation).

Infant mortality in Sakha in eastern Siberia is 70 per cent above the national average. This is the region that recorded Russia’s coolest temperature — minus 72C — in 1926. The region has high rates of alcoholism, unemployment and suicides.

Going by present trends, the population of Siberia and the far north is set to decline by a third over the next 20 years.

But it is not exactly sunny in the rest of Russia. It is usual for hundreds to die of the harsh cold on Moscow’s streets every year. This year about 300 have died. About 2,200 people have been treated for frostbite, hypothermia and other cold-related illnesses.—Dawn/InterPress News Service.