#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The Committee for the Affairs of the North and Indigenous Minorities of the Legislative Assembly of the Krasnoyarsk region decided to expand the list of benefits that are accorded to tundra residents.
The deputy chairman of the committee Valery Vengo said that according to the legislation, the Taimyr people, who carry out traditional economic activities, are provided with communication means free of charge. Satellite phones have been purchased for reindeer herders and hunters since 2018, but now, Vengo explains, the purchase of consumables for them – SIM cards with an airtime package – is not provided by the law at the expense of the regional budget.
“It is clear that the reindeer herders, fishermen and hunters will not be able to contact satellite operators. Therefore, legal discussions were conducted for six months, and finally they came to a common understanding of how to proceed in this situation. So, once in every five years each user will get airtime packages of 250 minutes for budgetary funds – this should be enough for emergency cases. I hope that at the end of this year we will hand over a batch of 60 satellite phones with airtime packages to our northerners following the auction results”, he said.
Valery Vengo added that the presence of high-quality stable communication where people are constantly in extreme conditions is not an excessive demand, it should become the norm. In his opinion, satellite communications, for example, will help quickly find a team of reindeer herders in the endless expanses of the tundra, reduce the time for providing assistance and save flight hours.
“Without such a connection, when calling the air ambulance, sometimes half a day or even a day and night was spent in order to find a reindeer herding camp or a fishing point in the tundra. A satellite phone will allow to provide assistance quickly”, he concluded.
Text: Mikhail Tuaev, Photo: Dmitry Bykov
