The local Councils of Deputies have agreed to the merger of Orsha and Orsha District into a single administrative-territorial unit.
16/11/20120 views
On November 16, Vitebsk / Olga Bogacheva - BELTA /. Local Councils of Deputies have agreed to merge Orsha and Orsha District into a single administrative-territorial unit, as reported to BELTA correspondent by the Orsha City Council of Deputies.
"The deputies' consent to merge the city and the district into a single administrative-territorial unit – Orsha District with the administrative centre in the city of Orsha – was given at the meetings of the Orsha City and Orsha District Councils of Deputies. Currently, the necessary documents on this issue have been prepared and sent for further work to the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee," specialists said.
The Council of Deputies noted that throughout October, the executive committees studied the opinions of citizens of Orsha and Orsha District on the issue of merging the city and the district into a single administrative-territorial unit. The monitoring results are posted on the official websites of these regions.
In Orsha, 22.6 thousand citizens expressed their opinion on this issue. 21.3 thousand people, or 94.4% of citizens, supported the merger of the city and the district. 575 residents of Orsha, or 2.5%, opposed it, and 703 people, or 3.1% of the surveyed residents of Orsha, did not express a definite opinion.
In Orsha District, about 6 thousand local residents shared their opinions with local authorities. 4.5 thousand residents of the district, or 75.8% of citizens who participated in the opinion poll, supported the creation of a single territorial unit. 1.1 thousand people, or 18.6%, were against the merger, and 333, or 5.6%, did not express a definite opinion. Given that the majority of citizens supported the proposal to merge Orsha District and Orsha into a single administrative-territorial unit, there is no need to make any adjustments to this proposal, as noted on the official website of the Orsha District Executive Committee.
The prerequisites for merging Orsha District and Orsha have developed over the past few years in connection with the improvement of management in various spheres of public services through the merger into a single organization, common for the district and the city institutions of medical care, sanitary-epidemiological service, ecology, communications, military commissariats, and regional units of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
The proposed merger, according to local authorities, will enable more prompt, targeted, and comprehensive resolution of socio-economic development issues for both the city and the district. The coordination of actions by various structures will be improved. The concentration of material and financial resources will allow for more effective resolution of rural development issues and improvement of the operating conditions for economic entities. The merger of housing and communal services departments will create a powerful structure based on existing facilities, providing high-level services to facilities in agro-towns and other rural settlements, and expanding the range of services offered to city residents. The merger of the district and the city will optimize management processes, reduce the costs of maintaining administrative personnel, balance the socio-economic development of the territory, and ensure approximately equal accessibility of social infrastructure for residents of both the city and the rural areas.
Both executive committees believe that the implementation of this proposal will not lead to changes in the amount of revenues, expenditures, or sources of funding, budget deficit, or any negative consequences for legal entities and individuals, including individual entrepreneurs, and will not affect business operating conditions.
Proposals for improving the administrative-territorial structure at the basic level have been made taking into account the forecast of population changes, the development of its settlement system, environmental protection complexes, the formation of a social service system, and the historical traditions of the region's administrative structure. When preparing these proposals, the experience and peculiarities of the functioning of already merged administrative-territorial units in Belarus were taken into account. For example, between 2002 and 2007, 12 cities and districts were merged into one administrative-territorial unit: Zhlobin District and Zhlobin, Kobrin District and Kobrin, Rechytsa District and Rechytsa, Svetlogorsk District and Svetlogorsk, Slonim District and Slonim, Lida District and Lida, Molodechno District and Molodechno, Lepel District and Lepel, Slutsk District and Slutsk, Borisov District and Borisov, Soligorsk District and Soligorsk, Mozyr District and Mozyr.-0-
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