Degtyarev will cancel Furgal's ban on flying business class for Khabarovsk officials

Khabarovsk officials will again start flying to Moscow in business class cabins. For the increased comfort of civil servants, they are offered to pay taxpayers.

“This is not the case, our ministers must regularly visit the capital and meet with federal colleagues, defend the interests of the region, attract funds to our budget in the interests of the people. In this regard, the issue of efficiency is not idle. I would like to ask the residents how many billions of rubles the minister should attract so that we compensate him for the business class flight”, - said in his Instagram account the Acting Governor of the Khabarovsk Territory Mikhail Degtyaryov.

In addition to comfort on the planes, Degtyaryov suggested that officials buy expensive tickets for sea and river transport at the expense of the budget - at a rate not higher than the cost of travel in a luxury cabin, and for trains - in luxury carriages.

Degtyaryov's proposal runs counter to the decision of the former governor of the region, Sergei Furgal, who in March last year banned officials from buying business class air tickets for business trips. For those who want to continue flying in deluxe cabins, Furgal offered to pay the difference in ticket prices at his own expense.

“If an official wants to fly somewhere business - only at his own expense. All business trips today are signed by me and carried out exclusively with my consent. I know the movement of all ministers and committee leaders, ”Furgal said in 2019.

The reason for the tough reform was the difficult financial and economic situation of the region. In December 2019, the Khabarovsk Regional Duma adopted a budget for 2020 with a deficit of 7.2 billion rubles. The Ministry of Finance of the region called the budget "conservative", and residents - "the budget for maintaining physiological existence." In such conditions, Furgal considered the right of officials to luxury and business-class flights at public expense to be unfair to the majority of the region's residents.

Top officials of many states fly in economy class, not considering it shameful. World media have repeatedly published photos of the prime ministers of Norway, Great Britain, the German Chancellor, the presidents of Mexico, Croatia, Lithuania, Indonesia, Israel and Finland, flying in regular cabins on low-cost airlines.

On July 9, 2020, Governor Furgal, who won the 2018 elections for United Russia Vyacheslav Shport, and was one of the ten most popular regional politicians, was detained in Khabarovsk on charges of committing a serious criminal offense. After his arrest, thousands of protest actions in support of the disgraced governor do not stop in the region.