Translated material
Kuznetsov's plan
Krasnoyarsk officials may begin to be tested for drug addiction
Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Lev Kuznetsov (pictured) made an interesting proposal: to check all administration employees for drug use. The head of the region expressed this idea at a meeting with the public council at the regional administration of the Federal Drug Control Service. “It is necessary to find a form so that people addicted to drugs cannot work in government. Let’s start with ourselves,” said Mr. Kuznetsov.Later, the governor’s press secretary, Igor Astapov, emphasized that his boss’s proposal does not mean at all that Krasnoyarsk regional officials are entirely drug addicts or represent some kind of special risk group. “A conversation arose that there is an idea to test all students and students, but the legislation does not oblige people. This is done only on a voluntary basis, including at some enterprises. In order to set an example for everyone else, Lev Kuznetsov suggested starting with himself,” said the assistant to the head of the region.
Mr. Kuznetsov is not the first governor who wanted to arrange for his employees to be tested according to criteria that are not formally defining for a civil servant. Similar ideas come to different heads of subjects from time to time. In terms of exams, the governor of the Ulyanovsk region, Sergei Morozov, can claim the title of Russian champion for his subordinates. In 2007, he invited regional administration officials to take a Russian language test. The governor called this a new form of incentive to improve the educational level of employees. The Ministry of Education and Social Development of the Ulyanovsk Region was commissioned to conduct the test. It developed tasks based on the Russian language course of the 11th grade of high school. The results were later announced at the next staff meeting in the governor’s administration. The “losers” were not fired, but they were dishonored. The head of the region did not calm down on this. He first tested the officials on their knowledge of the history of their native land, and then gave them an English exam. According to rumors, this idea of the champion of knowledge was prompted by a trip abroad, which revealed that officials had an extremely low level of proficiency in foreign languages.
In Kazan in 2008, 12% of city executive committee employees were left without work as a result of a personnel audit and lie detector test. The polygraph in general turned out to be a favorite topic for many “fighters for the purity of the ranks.” For the first time in Russia, the Rodina political party proposed testing officials with a lie detector in 2004. And in 2006, this idea was picked up by the then Voronezh governor (now a member of the Federation Council) Vladimir Kulakov. He referred to the world experience of polygraph testing of high-ranking officials. The head of the region proposed testing every person hired by government agencies or promoted. As a result, the head of the Kazan executive committee, Marat Zagidullov, managed to bring his plans to life, who at the end of 2007 issued an order on mandatory polygraph tests for all employees of the government agency he heads, except perhaps drivers and cleaners.
The lie detector topic has by no means exhausted itself, and in 2009 the Ministry of Internal Affairs came up with a proposal to examine all government officials, including law enforcement officers.
Governor of the Altai Territory Alexander Karlin, like his Ulyanovsk colleague, was concerned with the problem of education of officials. In 2008, he decided to conduct comprehensive checks of the authenticity of educational diplomas of employees of the regional administration, regional executive authorities and local governments, and organizations subordinate to them.
“When a governor comes up with such an initiative, he is often driven by the desire to stand out, to remind himself of himself in the federal information space. But most often such checks are carried out by governors who have recently taken office, as in the case of Kuznetsov in Krasnoyarsk, Deputy Director of the Institute of Social Systems Dmitry Badovsky told a Vremya Novostey correspondent. -- The head of the region is confirmed in his position and develops his own management style. In a sense, he gives a signal to officials to stay on their toes and not relax. And if anything happens, we can check the Russian language and see if they use anything. And then we will test your ability to use a computer. The checks can be different, the main thing is to show the strength and toughness of the governor.”