Russia's Chita Is Hit By A Garbage Collapse

• 19.06.2025, 19:58

Garbage truck drivers were sent to war in Ukraine.

Chita has experienced disruptions in waste removal amid an acute shortage of personnel: garbage truck drivers have gone to war with Ukraine, said "Chita.ru" deputy director general of the rego-operator company for the removal of solid waste in Transbaikalia "Oleron+" Andrey Khustochka.

Andrey Khustochka.

According to him, the company is experiencing a "personnel famine" and continues to look for chauffeurs. "With movers is still more or less, but with drivers is bad. We just had five drivers leave for SWO. Two months already trying to find staff, during this time came about 30 people who interned, but unfortunately, only one left. There is enough equipment, it is serviceable, but there is no one to work," Khustochka said at a meeting of the Chita City Duma's municipal economy committee on Thursday.

Besides the low salary (35 thousand Russian rubles, according to the laid tariff), candidates do not like the specifics of the work itself. "People come to us, pass two sites and say, 'Sorry, I can't do it anymore - it smells,'" said a representative of Oleron+. According to him, due to the shortage of employees, workers have to overwork, and the equipment goes out on the routes even at night.

As the deputy Artyom Menyailo reported at the meeting, such a situation is observed not only in the field of garbage collection: "Since 2018, the number of drivers in public transport has decreased almost five times. And I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel."

In December, State Duma deputy Andrey Gurulev said that in Chita, half of the number of trolleybuses needed by the city had stopped running on the routes. The reason is the same: 17 employees at that time went to war with Ukraine. A way out of the situation would be to attract women to work on public transportation, the deputy said.