For four years running, a ghost school stood in Yavoriv district: walls erected, no roof, weeds growing inside where desks and blackboards should have been. Meanwhile, in the city council’s paperwork, a perfectly valid contract worth 60 million hryvnias lived on. The termination of the construction contract for this facility is news that, at first glance, concerns a single town — but in reality speaks to hundreds of similar “frozen” contracts still listed as active on paper across the country.
For government clients, local councils and construction companies, this story is more than a line in a court chronicle. It shows how a formally flawless document can mask a complete absence of work on site for years — and how the prosecutor’s office finally drew a line where local authorities preferred to stay silent and keep the paperwork going “just in case.”
Termination of the Construction Contract: Timeline in Shklo
The story of the town of Shklo in Yavoriv district is an example of just how far the gap between paperwork and reality can stretch. Here is what official sources established and confirmed:
- the town of Shklo, Novoyavorivsk city community, Lviv region;
- a contract for the construction of an educational facility worth nearly UAH 60 million, awarded through an open tender between the Novoyavorivsk city council and a contractor;
- actual construction work was carried out only until 2022;
- throughout 2023–2026 the facility was effectively not financed and not built;
- at the end of 2022 the parties signed a supplementary agreement extending the contract for another four years — despite the council already knowing that funding for continued work was unavailable;
- the price and scope of work were never revised during this time, while the contract itself formally remained in force;
- the Yavoriv district prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit seeking to have the supplementary agreement declared invalid.
It was this court ruling that gave grounds to speak of the construction contract’s termination — the funds ultimately did not vanish, but stayed in the community’s budget instead of hanging on paper for years disguised as an active project.
Why Public Procurement in Construction Needs This Kind of Oversight
This case matters not because of the sum involved — 60 million hryvnias is no record against the backdrop of billion-hryvnia reconstruction programs. What matters is the precedent: a supplementary agreement signed “just in case,” with no real financial backing, is not a free pass for either the contractor or the local council. As Ukraine signs new contracts every month to rebuild schools, kindergartens and hospitals, precisely this kind of scrutiny is a reminder that every signature must be backed by a real work schedule, not just an intention to fulfill it someday.
For construction companies working with government clients, this is a signal to review their own portfolio of “long-running” contracts before the prosecutor’s office does it for them. Budget funds for construction do not tolerate uncertainty: either the building keeps rising floor by floor, or the money should return to where it came from — the shared budget of a community still waiting for its new school.
The story of Shklo is a reminder that behind every rebuilt school stands not just concrete and rebar, but contract transparency and accountability at every stage. At SpecServis, this kind of discipline is regarded as the foundation of genuine reconstruction — the kind that ends with a new roof, not a court case.
Source: ZAXID.NET
