Less than half of Odesa city council members officially hold meetings with people – NGO Ukrainian voting committee

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, significantly fewer members of the Odesa City Council have been receiving citizens. Compared to 2021, this figure decreased from 92% to 47% in 2023. The CVU’s monitoring confirmed that 28 deputies (47%) received voters in their offices, and 24 of them attended personal receptions.

This was stated by Anatoliy Boyko, Head of the Odesa Regional Organization of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, at a briefing at the Ukraine-Odesa Media Center.

“The monitoring was conducted from September 1 to October 31 of this year through in-person visits to the offices of 59 out of 62 MPs. It was 59 deputies who remained in the Odesa City Council, because two are in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and another one died. Together with the experts, political science students of the 2nd-4th year of Mechnikov National University and Odesa National Law Academy took part in the field monitoring,” said the CVU head.

The campaign’s experts found that the biggest obstacle to communication between citizens and MPs is the lack of published up-to-date information about the reception offices of most Odesa MPs. 

“Full or partial contact information about the reception offices can be found on the Facebook pages of 21 city council deputies, while four deputies have outdated information. Through Facebook, 15 deputies also inform citizens about their receptions. Another 6 deputies maintain communication with voters through chats with representatives of condominiums in various messengers,” noted Anatoliy Boyko.

According to the monitoring results, experts noted certain changes in the approach to organizing and conducting MPs’ receptions in 2023: MPs switched to online messages and online communication with voters.

“The vast majority of MPs’ offices now practice pre-registration. They used to do it according to a set schedule. Now, MPs post announcements, invitations, and reports on social media. The format of meetings for most deputies has changed from offline to online communication. It should be noted that the majority of Odesa deputies were able to establish interaction with citizens and hold personal meetings both in the traditional format and by alternative means,” summarized the CVU head.

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