Biryukov highly praised the quality of the newly laid paving tiles in Moscow. "The tiles came through the winter beautifully. There were no injury incidents on the tiled surfaces," he explained. "The number of injuries caused by slipperiness has dropped by many dozens of times this year compared with 2009–2010," Biryukov said. "They are convenient and comfortable for Muscovites to walk on," the deputy mayor emphasized. http://interfax.ru/moscow/news.asp?id=236631
Read Varlamov’s interesting post about the "high-quality tiles that made it through the winter".
Deputy Mayor for Housing, Utilities, and Beautification Pyotr Biryukov responded to bloggers’ complaints about the sidewalk tiles and excessively dirty streets. He said the tiles had made it through the winter "comfortably and beautifully." "There were no problems at all. If there’s a photo of a puddle somewhere on the internet, it’s definitely on asphalt, not on tile," Moskovsky Komsomolets (a Russian newspaper) quoted the deputy mayor as saying.
I followed the tile-laying process closely. And I suggest comparing the result using one particular section as an example. Here, the clumsy workers from Avtodor KKB Zvenigorod LLC decided to steal a little more. Remember the proper method? First, 30 cm (about 12 inches) of old asphalt is cut away, then 16 cm of reinforced concrete is laid, then 6 cm of a cement-sand mix, and sidewalk tiles go on top. On many sections, they just cut away the asphalt and that was it. That’s how nearly 50% of the budget gets stolen.
As usual, we look at a lot of things in terms of money. Sorry about that.
The tiles cost all of us 1 billion rubles (roughly over $30 million at the time; if people hadn’t started protesting, it would have been 4 billion), and once again stirred up the issue of how Mayor Sobyanin’s strange and sudden obsession with laying tiles as fast as possible and in record quantities just so happens to coincide with uhhh... certain facts from his wife’s business biography, which earned her the nickname "Ira the Curb."
When the RosPil team, at Varlamov’s request, was looking for information for his post about who exactly had laid the tiles (that’s how all these discoveries turned up: "Mereniya LLC. Since 2004, it has been engaged in asphalt paving, road maintenance, and courtyard improvement, mainly in the Northern Administrative District. Its sole owner is Gagik Aslanyan, who also owns two construction companies, Stroykon+ LLC and Evrostroy Plus G LLC, as well as the Mayer nightclub and the Kashtan café near Vodny Stadion metro station"), we found something very simple:
We don’t know how much Gagik Aslanyan paid, or to whom, for this tile contract, but we do know that puddles on the tiles show that the work was done badly, and that officials accepted it for some reason. The warranty is three years—let Gagik Aslanyan redo everything, and who pays for it is not our concern. We’ve already paid in full. Let the people who took kickbacks from Gagik return them—that will be enough to cover the warranty repairs. Biryukov clearly must know who those people are, given how actively he is shielding them and urging us not to believe our own eyes: there are no puddles on the tiles.
RosYama, together with anyone interested, is ready to collect and systematize all the obvious defects that have appeared in the tiles. RosPil will find all the contractors and contracts. After that, we will demand that Mayor Sobyanin, through the proper formal procedure, compel the contractors to carry out warranty repairs until we get the tiles we were supposed to get for the money we have already paid.
We’ll keep you updated on the progress of Tilegate.