Prague 10 Calls the Diggers to One Table: Who Is Responsible for Malešice?

The mayor of Prague 10, Martin Valovič, is convening a joint meeting over what is happening in Malešice and on Počernická: several construction projects running at once, traffic restrictions stacked on top of each other, and repeated failures of the water mains. He will invite the contractors building the Počernická tram line, Pražské vodovody a kanalizace, and the other companies laying utilities in the area. From the district, the mayor will be joined by Mikuláš Pobuda, the councillor for transport, Milan Maršálek, the councillor for the environment, and officials from the relevant departments. The district announced the meeting on 7 September; it has not published a date for it.

What residents are reporting, according to the district, is a specific list rather than a general complaint: difficult passage along the streets, inadequate signage, dirt, dust, hard access to homes and businesses, and a shortage of current information. Planned water shut-offs and burst mains make it worse.

The admission at the centre of the release

Prague 10 states plainly that it is not the investor in most of these works and cannot directly manage how they proceed. It also cannot decide whether a water tanker is brought in when a main fails. Its position is that this does not oblige it to accept the effects on daily life, and the purpose of the meeting is to get every responsible organisation into one room, name the specific problems and agree how they are fixed.

At this meeting I will as mayor stand behind the residents of Malešice, who have for too long borne the consequences of overlapping excavations, closures, shut-offs and failures. People need to get home safely, to the doctor, to school or to the stop. They also need to know why they have no water, whether the situation is connected with the construction, and where they will get drinking water. That is why I want clear answers from all participants, specific dates, and guarantees that what we agree will actually be delivered.

— Martin Valovič, mayor of Prague 10

The water question is the sharpest one, because it is where cause and effect are genuinely unclear. The district will ask Pražské vodovody a kanalizace what its procedure is in an unexpected failure and how the decision to send a tanker is made. It also wants a clear explanation of whether, and in which cases, individual failures are connected to the construction under way. Residents, the release notes, frequently connect the water outages with the tram line being built on Počernická — an inference that may or may not be right, and that nobody has so far confirmed or refuted for them.

A schedule nobody publishes as one document

The second theme is traffic: how passable the area is, how the individual restrictions follow on from one another, and pedestrian safety.

Residents today often see another excavation or a new restriction, but do not know who is responsible for it, how it relates to the other works and when it will end. That has to change. We will demand a joint and comprehensible schedule, better coordination of traffic measures and safe pedestrian routes. Every restriction must have a clear reason, a responsible person and an end date.

— Mikuláš Pobuda, Prague 10 councillor for transport

Maršálek's remit is cleanliness, dust, handling of excavated soil and the condition of greenery around the sites — and his statement carries the figure that puts the rest in proportion.

Construction always means a certain restriction, but it cannot be an excuse for recurring mess, excessive dust or an inadequately secured site perimeter. We want to know the specific measures, how they are checked and above all to obtain a guarantee that the agreed remedy will actually happen. At the same time the Prague 10 district has a plan ready for renewing the public spaces adjoining the construction, such as playgrounds and local squares, which we want to revitalise at an accelerated pace, so that it is a certain compensation to residents for three years of living with heavy construction.

— Milan Maršálek, Prague 10 councillor for the environment

Three years is the span, and the renewal of the estate's public spaces is to be carried out alongside completion of the tram line. That pairing is the part of this worth watching. Coordination meetings are easy to call and their outcomes are hard to verify; a programme of playgrounds and local squares delivered on the same timetable as the track is a commitment that can be checked against the ground.