The Minister of Environment Protection and Natural Resources, Ruslan Strilets, together with other employees of the department and the public, cleaned the national natural park Holosiivskyi in Kyiv. Toloka was held at 9 locations, which cleared almost 5 tons of garbage.
Some Facebook users criticized this initiative of the Ministry of Environment, in particular, for its inconsistency with environmental reforms. Cleaning the territory and carrying out polls are not part of the direct duties of ministry officials, for which they receive a salary from taxpayers.
One gets the impression that the toloka was an image project. After all, it was held on Thursday, April 13, during the working hours of the ministry.
Yevgeny Fedorenko, Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, said that 90% of the collected garbage consisted of PET bottles, plastic bags and glass containers.
The press service of the Ministry of Environment said that in addition to cleaning, 45 birdhouses and 20 bird feeders were installed in the national park.
Drawing attention to the problems of clogging of green areas of Kyiv is admirable. However, it took place against the background of a number of unresolved environmental issues, numerous undeveloped and unfinished legal acts, in particular regarding garbage reform, implementation best available technologies and management practices, etc , corruption scandals, etc.
Social network users mostly reacted positively to the toloku.
"What kind of Soviet game is this? Is this a reform?", wrote the user Anatoliy Boyko, adding a post about the new anthem of the State Environmental Inspection.
The Strilets said that in addition to the immediate cleaning of the territory, it was also possible to solve one of the problems of the national park. The Minister signed a new zoning project of the territory, which corrects the mistakes of 2019 and increases the protected zone of the park to 20.4%.
"Holosiivskyi National Park" is not an amusement park, not a picnic area, but a place of preservation and restoration of nature. There can be no illegal construction and illegal business facilities here. There should not be any problematic issues with land and property, and we are confidently moving towards this," Strilets emphasized.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that the State Environmental Inspection released its national anthem, to which users of social networks reacted violently. People were outraged by the fact that against the background of the war and numerous internal problems, the State Inspectorate was directing its efforts to image projects.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, public figure Maksym Bakhmatov called for marking the dubious order of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources No. 308, which turned the protected area of the Holosiyiv forest in Kyiv into a farm.