OPPOSITION PLATFORM – FOR LIFE demands that the government immediately attends to uncontrolled surge in wage arrears which have reached almost 3.4 billion hryvnia and takes urgent measures to reduce it. This was stated by MP Serhiy Lovochkin commenting on the most recent data.

“The government ignores this problem. Over the year of its tenure the wage arrears rose by almost 40 percent, in March by 5.3 percent. It’s a huge figure of 3.4 billion hryvnia that our citizens earned but were not paid. We demand that the Cabinet attends to it at first place because it’s a question of people making ends meet during these difficult times,” the MP said.

Lovochkin added that the situation is the gravest in manufacturing industry, with its 2.63 billion hryvnia in wage arrears being the largest share in the total figure. Since early 2021, it rose by 29.7 percent. And growth rates for wage arrears are the highest in construction sector, where the salaries that workers did not receive grew by 3.1-fold in the first quarter of 2021 alone.

“The situation remains critical in healthcare and social welfare, where the arrears increased by almost 84 percent over the same period. If healthcare workers are not paid what they earned, it is obvious that the Cabinet fails to look at this issue. For when it is the government’s priority, the wage arrears decrease. But current 3.4 billion hryvnia are among the worst figures in the past 20 years, so the problem must be addressed immediately,” Lovochkin said.