The problem with backdated wages in Ukraine has been deteriorating recently. Deputy head of the Opposition Bloc faction Serhiy Lovochkin reported that over the first three quarters of 2018, employers’ debts to the Ukrainians increased by 22 percent, having reached another anti-record of UAH 2,889 billion as of Oct. 1. The politician is convinced that current authorities do not take appropriate measures to change the situation.

“As of Oct. 1, wage arrears have reached the highest level for the past 17 years, and the trend maintains. In September, wage arrears increased by UAH 177 million or 6.5 percdent. Over the first nine months of 2018, there has been an increase of 22 percent. Despite repeated promises, the government does not take measures that would improve the situation. As a result, without receiving even low Ukrainian salaries, our citizens are forced to look for work abroad,” Lovochkin said.

“If in the near future this trend is not reversed, the country will face catastrophic outflow of the working-age population. In this case, Ukraine will find itself in a constant economic and demographic crisis, which can no longer be overcome,” the politician stated.

Lovochkin said he had twice requested the government to take measures to reduce the debt. Upon an initiative of the Opposition Bloc, a bill was adopted on allocation of funds to support the coal industry, most of which funds was supposed to cover miners' salaries.

“Despite repeated promises by authorities, the wage arrears in the mining industry increased by 18.4 percent or UAH 95 million in September alone. Now they are already more than 600 million,” he said.

At the same time, according to the MP, wage arrears are growing not only in manufacturing industry, but also in the public sector. For the first nine months of 2018, the indebtedness in the education sector increased by 2.5 times, health care and provision of social assistance – by almost 3 times.

Lovochkin also reported that out of 25 regions of the country, wage arrears in 2018 increased in 22 of them. In the Zakarpattia region – by more than 3 times, the Ternopil region – by 3.7 times, the Kherson region – by 2.9 times, the Khmelnytskyi region – by 2.7 times, the Sumy region – by 2.1 times, the Ivano-Frankivsk region – by 2 times, the Zaporizhia region – by 1.9 times, the Chernihiv region and Kyiv – by 1.8 times.

“In general, more than two-thirds of all wage arrears are concentrated in eight industrial regions of the South-East – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Odesa, Kherson, and Mykolaiv. In most of them, debts exceed UAH 100 million. This results from the deep crisis in the industry and the growing trends of deindustrialization, which is actually state policy under the current authorities,” he stated.

The politician cited data that, in the industry as a whole, wage arrears have increased by 23 percent or UAH 425 million since the beginning of the year, having reached UAH 2,269 billion as of Oct. 1. In addition to coal industry, the problem of rapidly increasing debt is most acute in the food industry (since the beginning of the year, the debt grew by 26.8 percent), the textile industry (+ 49.7 percent since the beginning of the year), engineering, which owed workers almost UAH 0.8 billion (+ 37 percent since the beginning of the year), in the electricity and gas supplies (+ 55.2 percent).

“The authorities are not able to cope with the problem of growing wage arrears. Therefore, the issue of changing the political and economic course today is a matter that affects every citizen of Ukraine. Only the policy of ending the war and restoring the economy will allow increasing the salaries of the Ukrainians, not to mention paying them on time,” Lovochkin concluded.