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The Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
Brief outline of the speech of Boris Maltsev,
Speaker of the Tomsk Oblast State Duma,
at the XXXIX Duma Session
In May the whole world together with Russia celebrated the 65th anniversary of Victory over fascism. This event grew into the holiday for the whole global community. It is extremely important that all civilized countries pay their respect to the heroism and courage of the Soviet soldiers and workers on the home front. Despite the fact that 65 years have passed all the severities and atrocities of war experienced by our country are perceived by people with the same pain and acuity. The Victory was dearly bought by those who were fighting at front and who were working at the home front. I am convinced that our children and grandchildren will once again gratefully bow their heads to the unfadable act of courage of the Soviet people.
The world is still experiencing complicated processes due to the continued economic crisis. The situation is like a barometer forecasting bad weather. Raw materials fall in prices, including oil. A number of economists anticipate break in market in the near future. It is weighed down by a few EU countries. The most alarming situation is observed in Greece, Portugal and Romania. The EU is taking emergency measures: Greece is ‘freezing’ wages for three years, canceling the annual and other bonuses. Portugal and Spain are cutting the public sector workers’ wages by 5 %. The Romanian authorities are going to cut the wages by a quarter, pensions by 15 %, planning to dismiss 70,000 s public sector workers, close 150 hospitals within a year.
Measures taken by the governments to reduce budget expenditures entailed mass protest rallies and strikes growing into threatening scales and turning to robbery and shopbreaks. These are very alarming symptoms. Don’t think that Siberia is far away from Europe. This fire can spread to Russia as well.
We need to draw conclusions from what is happening. The main conclusion is well-known — we need to save the budgetary funds! Need to reduce the expenditure! By no means shall we say that the crisis is over and run into new debts! We must closely monitor each budgetary penny, and start setting a deficit-free budget and if possible loan-free budget for the next year. Each state-financed organization must learn how to save money and reduce expenditure. Those will win who will first learn how efficiently work with minimum budget expenditure.
Tomsk hosted two major reputable forums this month — Russian Library Congress and the
13th Innovation Forum.
Over 700 specialists from 62 Russian Regions, German, Swiss, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Czech guests took part in the Library Congress. Among the major results of the Congress I would place emphasis on the successful dialogue between librarians and representatives of authorities and business. We have brought six sets of Village Library Modules to Tomsk Oblast including computer hardware, printed and electronic publications; enhanced material and technical resources of two largest Oblast libraries; and finally Tomsk has managed to gain image of a forum city.
The Innovation Forum has witnessed greater representativity and scale this time. As reported by most experts and specialists it was held at high organizational and informative level. I had a certain feeling that each Forum participant had found something useful, learnt the achievements of other researchers, organizations, enterprises, regions, found something new, i.e. became richer!
Unfortunately, our weak spots are schools. According to the data I have, expenses for a secondary school student per year are (at par value of purchasing capacity) in the USA — USD 10,390, in Germany — USD 7,636, in South Korea — USD 6,645, in Russia — USD 1,754, in Tomsk Oblast — USD 1,300. As we can see the difference is obvious. We need to find the ways to reduce the gap.
I think we must immediately develop large-scale projects to support especially gifted youth. Schoolchildren, the youth must be continuously supported. We need to pick especially gifted children, continue their training in special camps, training sites, innovative schools. We need to develop a concept of innovative schools, invite high-qualification specialists from universities to innovative schools.
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