Magas was declared the Ingush capital 10 years ago, but back then it consisted of nothing but administrative buildings. The present head of the republic, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, took the construction process under his direct control. He rejected the existing plan and suggested that Magas should become a beautiful city of tomorrow, and not an ordinary, second-rate town.
The VK correspondent asked several questions to the mayor of Magas, Aslambek Sagov.
- What tasks did the head of the Republic give you regarding the city’s development process?- First of all, he asked me to stop illegal construction on the site and re-decorate already-existing buildings partially at the expense of the contractors who built them. Unfortunately, only one of them agreed to cooperate. We also agreed that it’s better to build houses on a turnkey basis, which wasn’t initially planned.
- There were some serious violations while alloting the sites for private houses in Magas. What are you doing in this regard?- We’ve already launched 80 lawsuits and 16 more are due to follow. But all the cases were lost, despite the fact that the sites were sold illegally and contradict the general city construction plan. If we do not win in the court, there will be 200 private houses where there were supposed to be only 50-70, which will reduce the number of parks, stores, restaurants and other public places.
- Has the new general plan been approved?
- Not yet. The plan is still being worked on, we are still perfecting it. It has to be very detailed and accurate.
- Will the city’s population grow?- When I assumed my responsibilities in 2008, only 600 people were resident in the city. Now the figure is 6,000. We have no problems with kindergartens, but now we have serious problems with schools – we have only one and it is already overcrowded: it is supposed to have 220 students, but now there are 700.
Pavel Tsoroev, Magas, exclusively to VK
