Investigators have opened a case against a Ryazan region official who ordered that humanitarian aid collected for victims of August’s wildfires be thrown in a garbage dump, RIA-Novosti reported Monday.
The official, Svetlana Dardykina, faces up to five years in prison if charged and convicted of negligence, the report said. She was fired last week over the incident.
The aid, mostly old clothes collected in Novosibirsk, were delivered to the region on Aug. 12 and were offered to inhabitants of the villages of Svezhenkaya and Tarandei. On Aug. 23, Dardykina ordered that the unclaimed items be tossed out.
A local priest who worked in relief aid in Ryazan told RIA-Novosti last week that some people donate “unusable” old clothes that they do not have the heart to throw away.
(MT)