Two months ago, the Assembly covered small gathering of Kharkov students due to the reduction in the number of scholarship holders from 40-45% to 15% and arrears since the summer. The Organization of Student Activists (OSA), whose activities began precisely with this action, reported on December 24 that students had recently received payments of up to 14,000 hryvnias . The Ministry of Education is gradually finding money to repay debts, and the ceiling on the number of scholarships for this university has been raised to 35%.

The situation is different depending on the stock exchanges. Among the top 20 scholarship holders, as of Thursday, December 21, the oldest were paid in full for August-November and the first year students for the September-November period. Only the amount for the month of December remains (i.e. 100%). The top 40 scholarship recipients have a debt of 500% (for August-December) among the oldest and 400% (September-December) among first-year students. The OSA declares:

“This is due only to the cohesion of the students who, from the beginning of collecting signatures of the petition, did not let the university administrations or the Ministry of Education and Science forget about this problem. Moreover, thanks to our joint actions, the number of scholarships is more than the announced 20%! Unofficial data shows 30% and 35%! This means that we are almost back to the previous limit of 40-45%. We see that only joint actions of the unit will be able to prevent social harassment and even improve the situation”.

Meanwhile, a year ago, the Assembly showed how the tram tracks on Mironositskaya Street were dismantled and asphalted. This caused a storm of negative among the readers and other opponents of automobilization in the city. But a week ago, on December 20, the city council announced the restoration of 12th tram line, which will go from South Railway Station to the Central Park. Although this is a shortened route – previously it went from Novozhanovo to the Forest Park.

It costs around 1 million hryvnias , which is 10 to 15 times cheaper than building a new line at pre-war prices. The rails used were old. “Actually, water sharpens stone. The same went for our criticism, which became unacceptable to the city authorities at a certain stage. It is difficult to say what played the main role, whether it was criticism or the fact that priorities changed and it became impossible to continue living in the paradigm of the old transport model”, believes Konstantin Dvornichenko, an instructor of the training center in the municipal enterprise “Trolleybus Depot No. 2”, who actively spoke out against the destruction of electric public transport.

In general, even in such a downtrodden and inert society as in this boring-faced city, interest in solving social problems is gradually growing, and free speech from below has a real impact despite the total bribery by the authorities of other local social and mass media. Let in the coming year these achievements be a source of inspiration to collectively defend your interests and build a horizontal organization capable of pushing back any power!

Assembly

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