It is planned to allocate ₴245 million for the arrangement of shelters in educational institutions in Mykolaiv within three years: ₴75 million of them in 2025

During 2025-2027, the Mykolaiv City Council plans to allocate 245 million 485 thousand hryvnias for the arrangement of shelters in educational institutions.

This is stated in the draft decision on consideration of the «Education» program on the Mykolaiv City Council website, NikVesti writes.

According to the project, they want to allocate 75 million hryvnias for these measures in 2025, 82.8 million hryvnias in 2026, and 87.6 million hryvnias in 2027. In the coming year, it is planned to start the renovation of the public school for gymnasiums №10 and 18, Lyceum №8 and the Academy of Children's Creativity.

There, in the draft decision, it is noted that during the validity of the previous «Education» program for 2022-2024, shelters were arranged in 27 secondary education institutions in Mykolaiv, which is 42% of the total number of such institutions in the city. Currently, the construction of the simplest shelters in 15 schools and an anti-radiation shelter in Lyceum №38 is underway.

It should be noted that today in Mykolaiv the educational process includes 2,115 students who study face-to-face, 17,172 students in a mixed form, and 18,527 — remotely. In addition, 372 students receive their education individually.

As previously written by NikVesti, there are 31 secondary education institutions in Mykolaiv in full-time/mixed format. Another 11 educational institutions plan to work part-time/mixed after the completion of repair work in shelters and buildings.

On the other hand, only 22 out of 73 preschool educational institutions are functioning in Mykolaiv today, in which 5,046 children study. They have already finished repairing the shelter in another kindergarten, it should be operational in the near future. Work continues in another 14 kindergartens.

We will remind that the Mykolaiv City Council is going to allocate 16.2 billion hryvnias for the implementation of the «Education» program for 2025-2027, 10.3 billion are planned to be allocated from the city budget. The amount of funding for the program is twice the previous budget for education in 2022-2024, which amounted to 8.6 billion hryvnias.

The situation with shelters in Mykolaiv

Only 7% of shelters in Mykolaiv are open. At the same time, there is a problem with the availability of shelters — there is no ramp or gentle descent. In April 2024, residents of Mykolaiv could not get into the shelter on the territory of the «Kazka» children's town during the air raid because it was closed. Based on this fact, the administration of the children's town conducted an internal investigation.

This is not the first situation with shelters closed during an air raid in Mykolaiv. Shelters in the Matviivka neighborhood, in the Tsentralnyi district of the city, and in the Yunist park were also closed during the strikes on Mykolaiv on March 17. After these cases, the mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, urged residents to call the police if the shelter or storage room is locked during an air raid.

In general, Mykolaiv was on the list of regions with the worst shelter conditions. After inspecting the condition of the shelters throughout Ukraine, the NSDC recognized the unsatisfactory performance of the shelters for use in a number of regions and cities, in particular — Mykolaiv. After that, the mayor dismissed Oleksandr Herasymenia, the head of the department for emergency situations and civil protection of the population. And the first deputy mayor Vitalii Lukov was reprimanded.

Vitalii Kim, the head of Mykolaiv RMA, clarified that 69% of abandoned shelters in the region are located in Mykolaiv. At the same time, almost half of the city's residents (47%) rated the condition of bomb shelters in the city as terrible or bad.

Back in May 2023, more than 70 million hryvnias were allocated from the budget of Mykolaiv for the repair and equipping of shelters. However, it turned out that the city budget will not receive funds from the 102 million hryvnias allocated by the state for the repair of shelters in schools and kindergartens of the region. And at the end of August 2023, the head of RMA Vitalii Kim said that he was dissatisfied with the shelters in the schools of the region.

Anna Lychko, the head of the education department of the Mykolaiv City Council, reported that shelters are being repaired in 21 schools in the city, and another 9 are at the planning stage. At the same time, the city council announced that by the end of 2023, the housing and communal services department plans to repair 18 of the simplest shelters.

In October 2023, NikVesti reported that the department of architecture of Mykolaiv RMA during the month concluded 27 direct contracts for the development of design and estimate documentation and the carrying out of major repairs of public sector institutions with the company from LLC «Architectural Bureau — Khvylia 89», which has existed for less than six months and is owned by a member of the public council of the region on restoration issues. Later, Mykolaiv RMA explained that direct contracts for the design of shelters with this firm allowed to save the budget.

Read the article NikVesti «Renovation at the end of the year: who got contracts for the shelter in Mykolaiv without a competition.»

In August 2024, the government allocated about 5 billion hryvnias from the budget for shelters in schools in eight regions, including the Mykolaiv region.

Also read the article NikVesti «Either two walls, or go outside.» Why didn't the Yuzhnoukrainsk government build a single shelter for the community in more than two years of war?»

It should be noted that the Mykolayiv region was among the five regions that in 2024 showed the best indicators for the increase and readiness of shelters.