Inspectors intimidate Kyivans looking for free rides on transport
ght that skipping fare on a city bus could nearly cost them the jewelry off their back. They thought wrong.
The two girls, heading home from school one recent afternoon, got caught without tickets by the two burly ticket inspectors on board the bus. The inspectors demanded the girls pay a fine and threatened to confiscate the girls' earrings if they did not pay. The men backed down from their threats only after other people interfered.
The incident highlights the numerous clashes that occur daily on Kyiv's public buses and tramways between passengers venturing a free ride and ticket inspectors rushing to fine them.
Apart from financial losses, the process of paying the fine can result in considerable moral damage to passengers, as inspectors use intimidation and sometimes violence to extract hryvnas out of violators.
While the measly Hr 10 average fines ($1.85) may not seem like much to Westerners, they rankle Ukrainians to no end. The majority of passengers on city buses earn miniscule salaries or pensions – as low as Hr 100 to Hr 150 a month. They are reluctant to pay even the minute 50 kopeck transport fare, not to mention fines of 20 times that.
Beyond that, the average Kyivan views fare skipping as a God-given right. In hard economic times, the common thinking goes, cash-strapped citizens should not have to pay for a necessity like public transportation.
Confront the average Kyivan with a couple of thick-necked, tough-talking ticket watchdogs and his or her frustration only grows.
With their salaries partially dependent on how much money they collect, inspectors have been known to resort to swearing, threats and sometimes physical contact in an all-out effort to collect fines.
Municipal regulations on fining passengers caught traveling without a ticket empower inspectors to order violators off public transport vehicles. If passengers still refuse to pay their fines, inspectors may take them to the police station.
But there are no clear rules explaining what ticket collectors should do when passengers refuse to go to the police precinct. Problems result when inspectors take a loose interpretation of what they are empowered to do – employing force, for example.
'Only authorities from law enforcement agencies are allowed to apply force to people while on duty,' said Evgeny Diky of the human rights group Helsinki-90 in Kyiv.
Helsinky-90 regularly receives numerous complaints from passengers, most of them women, about their horrible encounters with ticket inspectors. The two Yulias, who nearly lost their valuables to inspectors, were among those victims.
'Fortunately for them people on the bus stop started to gather around them and prevented inspectors from taking their jewelry,' Diky said.
Municipal authorities in charge of collecting transportation fares said their office also received complaints from passengers, but not all of them were about brutal treatment.'
'We receive many complaints from passengers, but a lot of them dispute the very fact that they had to be fined,' said Kim Goldman, head of the control department at the municipal transport department KyivMiskElektroTrans.
Goldman said, however, that passengers' numerous accounts of abusive inspectors often were true.
'There is no stamp in the passport proving that this particular person hadn't been in prison before he came to us. And we get to know these facts only when something happens,' Goldman said.
'Almost every week we have to fire one of our employees for behaving with passengers in an unacceptable way. And I am not afraid to admit it,' he added.
KyivMiskElektroTrans maintains an army of 250 mostly strong and big men and some 40 women. Inspectors usually work in pairs, although it is not uncommon to run into a group of three.
Inspectors are paid a fixed salary of Hr 95, and get 55 percent of every collected fine. After a recent increase in public transport fares in Kyiv to 50 kopeks, the amount of fine rose to Hr 10, which means an inspector is eligible to Hr 5,50 from every penalty payment.
At least that's how it is supposed to work. In reality, many inspectors simply take the money from the passenger and pocket it.
Kyiv resident Vitaly Zhytanov experienced that recently when he failed to pay for his luggage while riding on a tram.
'I had only Hr 5 with me, but they kept threatening they would take me to the police station and that I would be washing their vans for a week if I did not pay,' he said.
Zhytanov handed the inspectors all the money he had, but was given no receipt.
'They gave me only 30 kopeks to get home,' he said. 'I did not even manage to read their IDs since they flashed them very quickly.'
Goldman said he himself was unhappy with public discontent around ticket inspectors, but acknowledged that his agency could not mend the situation on its own.
'If everyone in this country was paid his salary on time, no problems would arise between passengers and inspectors,' he said.
Meanwhile, municipal authorities are taking what measures they can to put their army of ticket inspectors in order. The latest idea: uniforms. 'That will discipline them a little,' Goldman said.
