Lukashenko on approaches to metro construction: no need to build palaces underground

Belarus has managed to preserve its metro construction school – as noted by President Aleksandr Lukashenko at today’s opening ceremony of a new section of the third line of the Minsk metro

photo: www.president.gov.by

Gifts are traditionally presented on New Year's Eve, and – as added by the Head of State – people love when they are expensive, but there should be no excesses. “It is no need to build palaces underground. We’d rather make our stations less gorgeous, but construct more of them and of a perfect quality. We can rather lay more kilometres of our metro,” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted.

The Minsk metro transports 700,000+ people daily (one third of the total passenger traffic in the capital), so the Head of State stressed that more ambitious goals should be set: to transport half of Minsk’s population.

Aleksandr Lukashenko added that many people are amazed at the cleanliness of the Minsk metro, noting that this is how it should be – after all, the metro is the face and image of the capital. At the same time, the Belarusian leader stated that the construction process – though progressing well – is slow, “It is catastrophically slow. We need to do it twice as fast. There is no other way: we need to have a good, real metro in Minsk.”