Over the past years Ukraine has turned to be the poorest country in Europe, as witnessed by extremely low GDP per capita, estimated at $3,100 in 2018. OPPOSITION PLATFORM — FOR LIFE MP Serhiy Lovochkin has sent an inquiry to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Oleksii Honcharuk demanding to take immediate steps for comprehensive solving of the all-national poverty problem. These steps might as well include providing incentives for creation of new jobs, increasing the cost on living, etc.

The politician asks the government to note the alarming fact that even employed persons in Ukraine are not protected from poverty. Last year, one in five employed citizens of Ukraine lived below poverty line, earning less than the real cost of living. The reason is that the minimum wages, despite having increased nominally by 3.5 times over the past five years (from 1,218 hryvnia in early 2014 to 4,173 hryvnia in 2019), still doesn’t reach the real cost of living for employable persons (set at 4,776 hryvnia in July 2019).

“It’s difficult to find a job with decent salary in Ukraine. This is evidenced by the fact that most employed persons in our country earn less than average within the economy. In June 2019, the average salary was 10,783 hryvnia, while 63 percent of those employed earn less than this amount,” Lovochkin said.

According to the politician, these negative trends together with long-lasting crisis processes in economy cause the unemployment level in Ukraine remain high. In Q1 2019 it was over 9 percent, which is significantly higher than across countries of our region and the EU. According to Eurostat, Poland saw 3.8 percent of unemployment in May 2019, Slovakia 5.4 percent, Czech Republic 4.1 percent, Romania 4 percent, and the EU average was 6.3 percent.

The MP said that lack of decent jobs in Ukraine forces our citizens to migrate abroad in large numbers. Experts say about 4 to 6 million Ukrainians left the country for this reason; some estimate this figure at 9 million, adding seasonal migration.

“These negative trends prove that the previous administration’s measures aimed at fighting poverty of its citizens had been inefficient. This is why we are deeply concerned with formal nature of measures provisioned and approved by the previous government in this year’s Strategy for fighting poverty,” Lovochkin said.