Vitsebsk: people will be let to public hearing only after showing their passports

It is interesting that the “public hearing” will be held not in some official building, but outdoors, near the regional library named after Lenin. Nevertheless, Vitsebsk City Executive Committee warns that the people who intend to take part in the hearing need to take their passports with them.

The hearing will concern felling of four trees and several bushes near the library, as the executive committee plans to hold there "beautification and landscaping within the program"Green City".

Vitsebsk residents have a very negative attitude to felling of trees with further planting of new ones, which can be the probable reason for the order of presenting one's passport to be admitted to the “public hearing”: the executive committee wants to know the surnames and names of the discontented.

Vitsebskers expressed their utmost dissent in 2009, during the reconstruction of the Peramoha Square on order of the then head of Vitsebsk Regional Executive Committee Aliaksandr Kosinets. During this reconstruction, the authorities destroyed a park with rare species of trees. During the several years of “reconstruction” citizens kept reproaching the authorities for the liquidated green zone and haven't forgotten this case even now, when the whole square has been paved with tiles and arborvitae trees have been planted along the perimeter. It's interesting that the trees had to be planted twice, as most of those planted during the first time didn't survive.

Many Vitsebskers approve of the public hearing. However, will people dare object to the city authorities after their passport data will be put down? Many of them may either keep silent under the threat of possible negative consequence, or will ignore the event at all.

All previous public hearings in Vitsebsk were held anonymously: people just familiarized with the project presented by the authorities and made their proposals.