Журнал Viche 2008 №21

№21, 2008

Sometimes money costs too much

The adoption of the concerted Law “About primary measures in relation to prevention of negative consequences of the financial crisis and about bringing of changes into some legislative acts of Ukraine” by the Verkhovna Rada became the sum up of October in the second session and on the whole. The Parliament did not support the suggestion to transfer on January, 1, 2011 the increase of wages to the level of cost of living for capable of working people. Deputies didn’t also support assigning means for extra elections.

Mykhaylo PAPIYEV, the ex-minister of labour and social policy (Party of regions): — Annually the index of “optimization” of quantity of personnel is placed at the level of 10 percent in the next state budget. The business ends only with the increase of the apparatus and the number of officials. I have the same attitude toward this redundancy. Now it is not clear who and how has calculated that the state machine had to decrease by 20 percent exactly. Why not by 25 or 17? And that will happen with redundant people? In fact in accordance with the operating Law “About government service” and with the Code of labour they need to be noticed about redundancy in advance and they need to be placed in a job. Before dealing with such figures, one needs at least to forecast the fate of one person and his family. Oleksandr STOYAN (Party of regions): — According to official data at the moment there is about one million of unemployed people in Ukraine, almost 600 thousand people are registered in the labour exchange. It is difficult to forecast the concrete percent of all working people who will lose their work. Certainly, the workers of metallurgical industry will suffer more than others. Construction is stopped in the whole world, the demand on products declines. So only at the Mariupol metallurgical industrial plant named after Illich the large scale redundancies are planned. Well-known joint stock company the “Metal steel Kryvyi Rig”, keeping hot two blast-furnaces, will fairly come to the same decision. The redundancy of people should be expected in machine-building industry, construction, bank institutions. Working retirees whose amount is presently 2,740,000 will be made redundant. In Europe, Russia and other countries the recession of production will result in unemployment of our emigrants and their return to Ukraine. In the result we will get 11—15 percent of unemployment and in November-December this year we will have the critical mass of social dissatisfaction. The Budget of Fund of social security will not survive such tension. In this situation it is needed to develop the state policy of employment. We should find the mechanisms of support of retirees and attach human recourses into domestic production. Among national projects there is also the preparation to Euro-2012. The re-teaching of people is needed to be carried out at the state level. By the way there is the question about indexation of minimum and middle salary to the level of inflation in the obligations of the government before the IMF. But it is not said at what level of inflation it is needed to begin the count. And in the situation when the salary is frozen and inflation achieves 25 percent, one shouldn’t expect indemnification. Oleg ZARUBINSKYI (Block of Lytvyn): — It is not absolutely normally when one minister has from 8 to 12 substitutes! You will not find such phenomenon in any country of the world. The nature of such assignments is not in their functional necessity, but in that for the certain voting or decisions someone needs to give a position. Professionals should be left, but we should look into political assignments. There are quite a lot of examples of duplications in our organs of power; in particular, there are departments which fulfill the identical tasks. Clearly, the redundancy of officials can not be the main in the fight against crisis, as some “specialists” state. But it is needed to be done for systematization and harmonization of government service. Prepared by Oleksiy SYSCHUK. Photo by Mykola BILOKOPYTOV.