Local Councils of Deputies have agreed to merge Orsha and Orsha District into a single administrative-territorial unit
Local Councils of Deputies have given their consent to merge into a single administrative-territorial unit of Orsha and Orsha District, the Orsha City Council of Deputies informed a BELTA correspondent. "The deputies' consent to merge the city and the district into a single administrative-territorial unit, the Orsha District with the administrative center in the city of Orsha, was given at the meetings of the Orsha City and Orsha District Councils of Deputies. Currently, the necessary documents on this issue have been prepared and sent for further work to the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee," specialists said.
The Council of Deputies noted that throughout October, executive committees studied the opinions of citizens of Orsha and Orsha District on the issue of merging the city and the district into a single administrative-territorial unit. The monitoring results are posted on the official websites of these regions. In Orsha, 22.6 thousand citizens expressed their opinion on this issue. The merger of the city and the district was supported by 21.3 thousand people, or 94.4% of citizens. 575 Orsha residents, or 2.5%, spoke against it, and 703 people, or 3.1% of the surveyed residents of Orsha, did not express a definite opinion. In Orsha District, about 6 thousand local residents shared their opinions with local authorities. 4.5 thousand residents of the district, or 75.8% of the citizens who participated in the opinion survey, spoke in favor of creating a single territorial unit. 1.1 thousand people, or 18.6%, were against the merger, and 333, or 5.6%, did not express a definite opinion. Considering that the majority of citizens supported the proposal to merge Orsha District and Orsha into a single administrative-territorial unit, there is no need to make any adjustments to this proposal, it is noted on the official website of the Orsha District Executive Committee.
The prerequisites for the unification of the Orsha District and Orsha have developed over the past few years in connection with the improvement of management in various spheres of public life through the merger into a single organization, common for the district and the city institutions of medical care, sanitary-epidemiological service, ecology, communications, military commissariats, and regional units of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The proposed unification, according to local authorities, will allow for more prompt, targeted, and comprehensive resolution of socio-economic development issues for both the city and the district. The coordination of actions of various structures will improve. The concentration of material and financial resources will enable more effective resolution of issues related to rural development and improvement of the operating conditions for economic entities. The unification of housing and communal services departments will allow for a powerful structure based on the existing infrastructure, providing high-level services to facilities in agro-towns and other rural settlements, and expanding the range of services offered to city residents as well.
The unification of the district and the city will optimize management processes, reduce the costs of maintaining administrative personnel, balance the socio-economic development of the territory, and ensure approximately equal accessibility of social infrastructure for residents of both the city and the countryside. Both executive committees believe that the implementation of this proposal will not entail changes in the amount of revenues, expenditures, and sources of funding, budget deficit, or any negative consequences for legal entities and individuals, including individual entrepreneurs, and will not affect business conditions.
Proposals for improving the administrative-territorial structure at the basic level are made taking into account the forecast of population changes, the development of its settlement system, environmental complexes, the formation of a social service system, and the historical traditions of the region's administrative structure. When preparing them, the experience of activities and the peculiarities of the functioning of already merged administrative-territorial units of Belarus were taken into account. Thus, during 2002-2007, 12 cities and districts were merged into one administrative-territorial unit: Zhlobin district and Zhlobin, Kobrin district and Kobrin, Rechitsa district and Rechitsa, Svetlogorsk district and Svetlogorsk, Slonim district and Slonim, Lida district and Lida, Molodechno district and Molodechno, Lepel district and Lepel, Slutsk district and Slutsk, Borisov district and Borisov, Soligorsk district and Soligorsk, Mozyr district and Mozyr.