Sit at home

Since January 1, in several regions and cities of Russia, students lost the right to preferential travel in public transport

In Veliky Novgorod there is no longer a student travel for city buses and trolleybuses. In the Orenburg region, the cost of travel on train increased seriously: if earlier the state paid for the students half the cost of the fare, now - only 25%. In the Khabarovsk Territory, student benefits were canceled at all. At the same time, the fare from the new year also increased. From January 21, preferential travel of schoolchildren and students in electric trains of Chuvashia is canceled. In the Rostov region, cancellation is only planned.

Students of Veliky Novgorod created a petition on the Change portal demanding to return the benefits - and have already collected almost two and a half thousand signatures. “1600 rubles the cost of travel, more scholarships (a scholarship at the university is about 1200, in the college is generally 500-800 rubles). Shui, dress, feed yourself, study on full -time and pay 1600 for a travel card?! ” - the students are indignant and threaten to go to the square. Penza students also sign a similar petition - but there are no benefits there, and students do not understand why there are discounts for students in neighboring areas, and they are forced to pay for travel agents.

This should be expected, said State Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov. “Fare benefits are the first thing that begins to cut into a crisis. First, pensioners, then students, in parallel - state employees with their benefits. We recall the forgotten practice. The ghost of Shakhtar wanders along the hunchbacked bridge, ”he wrote on his Facebook.

The State Duma Committee for Education has embarked on for students: after all, if a student cannot get to the university due to lack of money, his right to education is violated. And the first deputy chairman of the committee Vladimir Burmatov told the National News Service that he had never seen the rallies lead to a solution to the problem, and not to the escalation of the conflict. He advised students to write a collective complaint to the local administration to the Prosecutor General.

If the budget does not have enough money for students, I would like to know what they are being spent on, said the “new” Artem Khromov, the Commissioner for Students' Rights in Russia. “In Krasnodar, they also decided to abolish the benefits (pensioners), but now they promised to return. So, you can redistribute the money and make it so that it is aimed at paying for the fare of pensioners. The point is that the decisions of the budget policy are transparent: if the funds are cut, each taxpayer must understand where his money goes. Students ask to explain why they should now pay more for the fare than their scholarship, ”Khromov said.

In two cities - Perm and Izhevsk - in 2009, students managed to return the abolished benefits. In Perm, the Studzazhzashite initiative group led the campaign for the preservation of student travel: with rallies, flash mobs at the door of the City Duma and negotiations with the mayor and governor. In Izhevsk, the Ipopat enterprise, engaged in transportation, announced the abolition of student travel for the New Year, but the students managed to ensure that the administration and transporters change the decision right on December 31. True, already in January it turned out that traveling officers were returned temporarily, only for a few months.

"New" will monitor the development of events