It’s been 20 months since the acting Cabinet of Ministers had been created, with its key task being the revival of the manufacturing industry. Still, the situation in the sector had only deteriorated since then: wage arrears reached 3 billion hryvnia or 77 percent of all wage arrears in Ukraine. This was stated by MP Serhiy Lovochkin.

“Twenty months are enough not only for a breakthrough but also for real results,” the politician said. “Unfortunately, this Cabinet’s results are negative. Since early 2021, the volume of unpaid salaries in manufacturing enterprises rose by 52.4 percent.  The issue of certain changes in the Cabinet are being currently addressed, but there must be some serious changes, for acting government has no industrial policy nor staff capable to implement it.”

The MP reminded that almost two thirds of unpaid wages are reported in four major industrial regions of Ukraine — the Donetsk region (22 percent), the Kharkiv region (12.4 percent), the Dnipro region (12.2 percent), and Kyiv (17.1 percent).

“In some cases, the situation has no logical explanation. It’s hard to understand why the debts of the mining industry grew by almost threefold amid energy deficit and price increase in the sector. Ukraine is seeing the deficit of coal, but wage arrears to miners reach 600 million hryvnia. There’s only one explanation to this: lack of professionalism in the Cabinet who led the nation to this grave energy crisis,” Lovochkin said.

“I am certain this problem cannot be sold without staff changes. In addition, this crisis will only get worse, and every Ukrainian citizen will take a hit,” Lovochkin said.