Drivers in Russia's Far East were so fed up at the shoddy work of local road-maintenance authorities that they filled a pothole with hundreds of coins and ruble-notes in protest, a news report said.
The flash mob, which was called "Road Tax Without Middlemen," was organized to highlight the poor quality of roads — and presumably the local corruption practises to blame for misdirected tax funds — in the town of Arsenyev in the Primorye region, the Interfax news agency reported.
A video of the event uploaded to YouTube showed footage of several cars having to swerve to avoid the town's large potholes before switching to the event itself, showing residents tipping buckets of coins and ruble notes into one large pothole in the road.
According to the protesters, it is more efficient to fill up the potholes with money, than to simply pay road tax and await the results, Interfax reported.
The description accompanying the clip says the video was taken on Saturday though the publishing date shows it was uploaded a day earlier, on Friday.
In all, about 30 kilograms of coins and notes, totaling several thousand rubles, were thrown into the hole and covered with cement by the activists, the Interfax news agency reported Tuesday, citing participants in the event.
The local authorities responded by saying in a press release that a sum of 3.9 million rubles ($67,000) had been allocated to local road repairs that are scheduled to begin as soon as the snow melts and should be completed by the May holidays, the Interfax news agency reported.
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