The situation with wage arrears to employees of public sectors has grown critical in recent months and needs to be urgently addressed by the parliament. This was stated by OPPOSITION PLATFORM – FOR LIFE MP Serhiy Lovochkin in a commentary on the new data from the State Statistics Service.

“We will demand the government to report to the Verkhovna Rada because the situation with wage arrears grew critical in the first months of 2021. In January-February alone the arrears increased by 23 percent, with no objective preconditions for that,” the politician said.

According to Lovochkin, the most catastrophic situation is reported in healthcare and social care sectors, which saw a 2.2-fold increase in wage arrears in 2021. This results from systemic underfunding of healthcare: in two months, the state budget expenses were underfunded by 13.3 percent or 2.9 billion hryvnia of the plan, which is by itself lower that the sector’s needs.

“Ukrainian doctors and nurses are being pushed to mass labor migration to other countries where they are offered much better conditions than at home. We should ask the government: do they believe there are more urgent and important expenses in the state budget than healthcare workers’ salaries? I am certain these are the top-priority expenses. As the Cabinet does not realize this, it’s obvious it does not fit for the duties performed,” the MP summed up.