’I can’t talk right now’

For tens of years thousands of Ukrainians lived in dormitories belonging to factories or municipal institutions, but now their homes have been ‘privatized’.

By Azad Zafarov

Posted on November 8th, 2009

Zafarov looked into the case of residents who lived in dormitories that were privatized, and now live with threats and under fear of eviction by the new owners. The story begins with Lyubov Lipseyeva, who lives in a Kyiv dormitory with a sick father and underage child. She said that the building’s new owners have threatened to cut off their electricity and water. This case is similar to a whole campus of dormitories that initially belonged to the plant “Bavovnyanka”. During the plant’s privatization the dorms were sold illegally into private ownership by labeling them as ‘non-residential property’.
Channel Five team takes viewers to a protest in Kyiv where more than 100 residents from different parts of Kyiv are asking for privatized dormitories to be returned to state ownership. MP Anatoliy Matvienko, author of a law concerning the return of privatized objects to the state said it was impossible in this case, since the building is now private property. In order to return it, the government would have to buy it out from the present owners, but in the situation of crisis nobody would care to think about it. He advised residents to go to court to prove this.

An official at the prosecutor general’s office says that there were many discrepancies in the law, which were not clear until March 2005, making it difficult now to prove the building’s new owner is at fault. Last year, out of 20 lawsuits filed, only six were resolved in favor of residents. Even a presidential order, mandating the registration of residents into dormitories and a moratorium on their eviction – is ignored, which leaves residents with nothing but to wait for their eviction.

The program “Investigation into the illegal privatization of dormitories” by reporter Azad Zafarov was aired on Channel Five.

To read the English transcript of the documentary, please click here.