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Most residents of Moscow and Moscow Region reacted negatively:
"What next? Compulsory video surveillance in the toilet?"
"Soon we'll have our fingerprints taken and a semen analysis done in order - 'just in case' - to determine paternity later."
"And why are the clubs still open anyway?"
These are just a small selection of comments to the mayor's post on the VKontakte social networking service.
Confined within four walls and partying in communal hallways"We're thinking of having a booze-up in the communal hallway, we can come to your place, will you buy beer for us?" Alevtina, the 16-year-old daughter of my mother's friend, wrote to me on social media on October 15.
Alevtina is in her final year - year 11 - at school. In less than a year, she is to take her EGE (a state exam required to apply to university). Since April 2020, she has been remote learning.
According to Alevtina, studying is now much easier. Also, Sobyanin extended the school half-term holiday from one to two weeks, ending October 18 - so she had a lot of free time on her hands to work part time at McDonald's. But Alevtina's mother, Irina, on learning that senior classes (years 6 to 11) have had their remote learning extended until November 1, 2020, "felt like howling with horror from her balcony".
"My daughter doesn't study at all and roams the streets and most children are doing the same. Many pupils in her class do not accept this teaching format. It is real child abuse," Alevtina's mother complains.
In order to force children to stay at home, the Moscow mayor blocked subsidized travel cards for school pupils and college students until October 18. Moscow pensioners over the age of 65 use similar subsidized cards entitling them to free travel around the city and their cards have also temporarily stopped working. On October 19, the cards of junior school pupils (up to year 6) were unblocked. Anyone older, including pensioners, is still deprived of their subsidized or free travel for the time being.
"My daughter goes to college in Moscow Region. The college has not moved its students to remote learning, so she has to pay the full fare, despite the fact that she is entitled to subsidized travel by law! Who will refund me these costs?" Complains Galina Itskova, a mother of three. Her monthly salary is 10,560 rubles (approx. $136). She has filed a complaint on the hotline, but has had no reply yet.
In addition, Sobyanin has ordered sports groups and clubs to close in Moscow. The majority of them have started online classes. Thus, the two-room apartment of Natalia Shipova, a single mother of four, has become a martial arts gym.
"Two of the children are in secondary school, years 6 and 7, and both are keen karate practitioners. Every day, they are shown via webcam what exercises to do and they do them. We push the sofas together and move the tables to one side and, as I work at my desk nearby, I have their constant tussling going on in front of me," Shipova laments.
Additionally, she says, the teachers can't explain new material to each pupil remotely. No more than 20 minutes are allocated for explaining new things and marks are inflated, because it is impossible to give a proper assessment of what pupils know via computer.
"This is a wasted year of learning. It is difficult not to be emotional - the situation is simultaneously a cause of despair and dismay," Shipova complains.
Working from home with a smell of petrolIn addition to older school pupils, pensioners and people with chronic health conditions, the Moscow mayor's office has ordered 30 percent of all staff of Moscow companies to be switched to working from home from October 5, 2020. One of them is Yegor, a research worker at a Moscow scientific center.
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