– Population polls are conducted annually in the region regarding the effectiveness of the work of territorial administrations. And you often say that all projects at the planning stage must be coordinated with the population of these territories. Why is this done?
– Dialogue with the population answers the main question – power for people or people for power. There is such a hackneyed phrase – “the authorities must work for the people.” But it often happens that the authorities do something, and then they wonder why the population gives a negative assessment of the result.
But the main thing is that the dialogue should not be tied to political activities, for example, to elections – it should be constant. Because cleaning the streets from snow, building a school, a playground – no one, better than the people living there, knows about this. What age are the children growing up there, are there children with disabilities, what interests these children have – only the residents themselves can suggest this.
– That is, constant communication with people helps to hear problems and solve them faster?
– And it helps to do it efficiently. Often, our assessment of the actions of the authorities is as follows – we have invested 20 billion in laying asphalt in the region and we think it’s cool. But a poorly made slope near the entrance or a puddle flowing in front of the entrance after the rain nullifies the value of these 20 billion for the population, which passes through this puddle and curses the power in the third generation.
If you do not understand this, then you should not be surprised that the population lives by its own interests, and we – by ours. We were not born bosses, we are the same people, but as leaders we must perceive work through the prism of “do as for yourself.” Do something for your mother who does not walk, for the wife who gave birth and carries a stroller, build a kindergarten, because your children or grandchildren will go there. And then everything looks different in terms of performance.
– Does this have an effect?
– From my point of view, 90% of the problems go away, because the population understands that this is done humanly, for people, and not for show. This is the logic we are trying to follow. But, of course, when you start to formalize this as a system of relationships, it requires a certain restructuring.
– The Belgorod region has always been among the most successful regions. Have you managed to improve or improve something while serving as the acting head of the region?
– I have been working for 10 months and, of course, it would be wrong to say that I changed something there. Because I compare myself with Evgeny Savchenko, who worked there for 27 years. That is, 27 years on the one hand and 10 months on the other. It would seem to me the height of arrogance and incorrectness if I started to say something like that. But there are several ideas that are at a certain stage of implementation.
– Please tell us in more detail.
– Today our project on digital testing of children took first place in the country in the competition of regions. It was my idea and no one else does it. The fact is that we all have children and many adults are afraid that a child dives into a computer like a swamp and drowns irrevocably.
As part of the educational standard, we begin to teach IT programming in the 7th grade, when the child, from my point of view, knows a thousand times more than the teacher. When the teacher begins to tell something, the child may simply not be interested. Our idea is to teach a child to understand that, for example, a telephone is not a toy, but communication and the ability to get an answer to any question. That is, it is a mechanism, an instrument for understanding the world.
When we started telling the teachers about this, they grabbed their heads. They say, it’s already hard for them, but here we also came up with something. But we found a company that developed the methodology, trained 4,500 teachers, and they saw that it was interesting. Then we gathered all the parents of schoolchildren from grades 1 to 4 and taught them a lesson. They showed that the child learns logic, how to solve problems, sequences. In the classroom, he often does exercises in order to develop the skill to break away from the computer and do physical exercises.
Of course, while we cannot introduce the program to all classes, we will gradually cover all schools and reach the kindergarten. We want the child to clearly understand what the digital world is. The Belgorod Region is the only region that has started to do this everywhere. We have 550 schools, and for each we have additionally bought 2 mobile classrooms with the best laptops. We assessed the digital skills of each student and every quarter we will measure the level of new competencies that the children received.
You need to understand that we do not want all our children to become programmers. But they need to understand what kind of world they will live in, what the fourth industrial revolution is. There are two ways to understand that a car is dangerous: to collide with it or to learn the rules of the road. We are for the rules.
Among other things, starting next year we will introduce changes to the system of providing the beneficiaries with medicines. So that a person can make an order by phone, and the next day he would already have medicines at home. No need to go to the pharmacy, write out a prescription.
We will also spend 1 billion rubles on the construction of housing for large families. The authorities say that it is necessary to give birth more, but then people can live in uncomfortable conditions. Of course, we will not be able to provide for everyone at once, but we will gradually build. We will allocate another 300-350 million rubles for housing for families with disabled children. It happens that a misfortune happens, and the income in the family is small. It seems to me that the state should help in this situation.
– What is your most ambitious idea?
– The most global idea is to double the gross regional product (GRP) by 2030. We now have a bankroll of about 950 billion and, from my point of view, the region is so strong, has such high competencies, a high level of personnel, and production infrastructure that it will cope with the task. Metallurgy, mining industry, agricultural holdings – this is what our economy is based on. And these are the opportunities that we must use for the next growth.
When I came up with this idea, my subordinates said it was nonsense. That is, it cannot be done because the peak has already been reached. I started talking to business, they said: “Vyacheslav Vladimirovich, it seems to us that this is not enough. Come on, two and a half. ” Now, starting from the idea, we began to form a specific program. These tasks require a new, refined strategy. We need new approaches that would make it possible to use our resources correctly in a modern, dynamically developing world. But the concept is correct. Our region is strong and accustomed to ambitious goals.
Why do we need to double the GRP? It’s very simple – we want to live even better. Therefore, we need more taxes, more jobs. The higher we go, the more we will achieve. You just need to accelerate.
The head of the Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov visited the editorial office of “MK”
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