Port task: there were no reforms, and there are no reforms

The situation with ports now is very bad. While maintaining the current management organization, the state will soon pay extra for the operation of ports from taxpayers’ money

“The transport task is to find the most profitable plan for transporting a homogeneous product from points of production (or storage) to points of consumption, that is, from suppliers to consumers, the effectiveness of which will be assessed by the criterion of the lowest cost of transportation.”

The article “Turkish Laundromat” well showed not only the abomination and meanness of everything Russian... but also well illustrated the principles of the “transport task”, which I cannot explain to the thieves and mediocrities who have settled in the management of the port industry of Ukraine.

The Russians have gas, they have wasted the best markets in Europe, and now they don’t know what to do with the gas that they are accumulating. In order to push from the places of pumping to the places of consumption of this gas in Europe, they will use the lowest vile methods of “business”, any means of deception and manipulation.

But from the point of view of a transport worker, we are faced with only a typical “transport task”. Which is studied in the initial courses of transport institutes. In short, freight flows do not appear out of nowhere (they can only disappear or change in a different direction). According to this classic transport problem, Ukrainian ports, in turn, do not exist on their own, but are needed only to ensure work within cargo flows.

I started working in the ports of the Soviet empire, when the ports were literally swelling with cargo. The planned socialist economy filled the berths of our ports with cargo for brothers in the socialist camp. For untimely unloading of a wagon with equipment at the port, 20 kopecks were deducted from the penny salary for each hour of unnecessary downtime of the wagon. Then Soviet ships with this equipment arrived, for example, in Vietnam, where they waited for several months just to be berthed, and then could stand for the same amount of time unloading.

Next, this equipment was unloaded into warehouses in Vietnam on top of what was delivered earlier (the previous equipment simply did not have time to be removed from the ports). I personally saw rows of boxes of crushed Soviet equipment (helping the Vietnamese people) on the piers of Haiphong... But. Then they existed, these cargo flows. Nobody needed them, but they were there. And they needed our ports.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine received extra port capacity, a completely Soviet port management system and port personnel who only knew how to lie and steal. But we also got some cargo flows: grain, ferrous metals, ore, coal, fertilizers, oil and the like. Having these cargo flows, as well as transit ones, the ports were not left behind, by analogy with the entire post-Soviet economy. They stagnated, were robbed, but worked as part of transport chains.

A particularly severe blow to the port industry was dealt with the creation of the so-called Ukrainian Sea Ports Administration (USPA). Created only for the purpose of centralized theft of state property, namely port dues, distribution of port facilities among “their own”, the main idea fell through with the flight of Yanukovych. And from centralized theft, the USPA has turned into a successful internal thief, whose senior personnel either steal from tenders or profit from personal enrichment by any means.

Proof of the first thesis is an excerpt from the USPA audit report 3 years after its creation and for the recent 3.5 years:

Thus, the USPA collects state port dues from ships on behalf of the state (this is the main task of the USPA) in the amount of several billion annually and loses approximately the same amount... They spend it either ineffectively, or to provide for “their loved ones.” But more on that below.

Further, in the minds of pseudo-reformer ministers A. Pivovarsky and V. Omelyan, another idea arose that Ukrainian ports could be used as a separate element of the transport chain and their services could be sold separately. And even sell individual ports of Ukraine. Over the past decades, demand on the world market for ore, metals, and grain has allowed Ukrainian ports to avoid the need to reconsider the role of the port industry in the country's economy, avoid modernizing technological processes, and cover up constant corruption schemes in the relationship between port management and clients.

But instead of working on port administration reform, these figures began promoting their crazy ideas. Along the way, throwing billions of government funds, as well as Western grants for our reforms, into the trash, giving their crazy ideas an attractive appearance. “Souffles, hyperloops and endless concessions (even bus stops) who remembers this now? But we need to remind you of this in the future only in the sense of how not to manage.

Further even more and more meaningless. Realizing their complete profanation in the transport sector, these figures came up with the following idea: let’s hire highly paid Western managers for positions in state-owned enterprises. They will supposedly help us make something real out of meaningless ideas.

So a Pole appeared in UZ, a Latvian in USPA, etc.

I have nothing against these managers, except for just one issue. They should have immediately told the stupid ministers that their ideas were stupid and they would not waste their professionalism on implementing stupid ministerial ideas. But the highest salaries simply “bought” them. At public expense. How this scam of chatterbox ministers ended can be seen in the court registry of Ukraine. It is enough to type the names of “Western managers” there.

There have been no reforms, theft and corruption are flourishing, legal cases are still pursuing dozens of “Western managers”.

It is also interesting that the salaries of these managers were immediately classified. Attempts to obtain data from the port administration on salaries for positions in this state-owned enterprise ended in a fiasco, even in court.

And the problem is not only that millions of state dollars were thrown into the firebox to provide for these “managers”. The problem is that wages in the unreformed administrations of both the railway and ports remain sky-high and do not correspond to modern performance results. Raivis Veckagans has not been with the USPA for a long time, but for some reason his million-dollar salary was inherited by far from European “managers” in the port industry. Well, at least he was abroad...

There was a meaningless justification from the ministers. And for what services to the port industry is the current head of the USPA Litvin Yu. being provided with a million-dollar salary? Only on the basis that under R. Veckagans there were 14 ports in the USPA (the Ukrainian ports of Crimea are not on the list, although when the foreign manager’s salary was agreed upon, he also had to be responsible for them), and now only 6 are operating

Why do the salaries of the top management of this enterprise not depend on the quality of the enterprise’s work, the absence of theft and corruption, and the number of subordinates? Why does an ordinary department head at the USPA, always swollen with corruption, show a million-dollar salary from the state? How to justify this financially is logical when port fees have decreased significantly.

Moreover, when you ask the USPA: show us your salaries, they answer you: we are commercial. When you say that in a commercial enterprise the director’s salary depends entirely on the result, the answer is: we are an administration of Specialists.

Specialists? Port industry? Or in the field of international relations and attracting investments? Seriously?

Example:

The USPA staff includes a whole deputy chairman, S.P. Kovshar. The salary shows according to the declaration in millions of UAH. annually. Official transport, paid vacation, medical insurance at the expense of the state, and of course the highest pension is provided. "Life is good." Experienced port worker? No, “1992-2016 worked in positions of state, municipal and private enterprises... Specialized education?

No, he only graduated from the Kharkov Agricultural Institute, majoring in Agricultural Economics, and received a qualification as an economist-organizer of agricultural production... He does not have a scientific degree or academic title. Language skills? Doesn't have...

Yes, of course, this “specialist” has a solid list of honorary awards and titles, which could strongly influence the urgent need for his appointment at the USPA. Full list of his awards: “Certificate of honor from the Kegichevsky district state administration on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the sugar factory named after. Lenina, 1999; Certificate of Honor from the Regional State Administration for the Day of Housing and Communal Services Workers, 2012; a badge of honor from G. Trukhanov on the occasion of a professional holiday - the Day of Housing and Communal Services Workers, 2014”... More quality awards will only be given at the USPA, of course.

The situation with ports now is very bad. While maintaining the current management organization, the state will soon pay extra for the operation of the ports from the money of taxpayers - citizens of Ukraine. And the port bureaucrats simply suck out assets either for corruption or for their own security.

Although even now indirect financing of the activities of the USPA is already carried out by citizens, taking into account the tens of thousands of court cases that are “hanging” in the register of cases with the USPA. Hundreds of investigators, detectives, judges, and their assistants, paid by citizens of Ukraine, are involved in these cases. services worth millions and billions of UAH constantly.

Whoever comes to the next parliament from the coastal cities, it is now necessary to create a group of patriotic enthusiasts and specialists who should begin to prepare changes to the Law on Sea Ports. In the new law, it is necessary to completely change the ideology of the port administration, remove all commercial functions there, and put absolute barriers to corruption.

It is necessary to give local authorities even the opportunity to independently decide what to do with the territory that is today occupied by often completely ineffective, closed and dirty port areas. From which there is neither adequate income for the state, nor benefit for local authorities or the population.

Moreover, now there is already an opportunity to try a new approach to ports. The State Property Fund of Ukraine has repeatedly tried to sell the port of the city of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky. In the absence of an understanding of cargo flows through this port, not a single normal buyer will buy it. And he really doesn’t buy (the classic transport problem works.). Moreover, it is not needed with the conditions to maintain a semblance of the next port in this place.

Given the excess port capacity in Ukraine, it would be quite logical to change the approach to this sale. In place of the port, it is necessary to create a resort and recreational area on the banks of the cozy Dniester estuary, and given the closed water area, it is realistic to build there countless recreation centers and training for water sports athletes.

Instead, FDI is trying to sell the port as a port, constantly reducing the price for the facility. In the end, they will sell it for pennies, and the territory will be bought by some offshore company, and in the Dniester estuary, which is now gradually self-cleaning itself from the previous activities of the dirty port, Firtash’s ilmenite or Zhivago’s pellets will again begin to be “dumped.”

A similar situation must be considered for Odessa, Kherson, Nikolaev, Mariupol and Berdyansk, where ports in the center of coastal cities literally destroy their tourist attractiveness, recreational opportunities and radically reduce the level of attractiveness of life in these “pearls by the sea”. And it’s time to stop recruiting “specialists” into the leadership of the transport industry who do not know the basic classical transport problem from the 2nd year of the transport institute.