Chornobyl Veterans Send a Letter

Members of two Chernihiv-based civic organizations, the oblast Chornobyl Union of Ukraine and the municipal Union of People Disabled by Chornobyl, have sent a letter to President Leonid Kuchma, stating their objections to Ukraine’s draft budget for 2005 in the section dealing with financing of Chornobyl programs. They believe that this document “ignores the urgent social protection needs of liquidators and victims of Chornobyl.” In particular, it leaves unresolved the problem of pensions for those who were disabled in the wake of the Chornobyl accident, which were frozen in 1996 and are now smaller, by UAH 100, than the average retirement pension. The draft does not provide for increases in health and disability compensations, or allowances to children and people living in contaminated areas. Funds for sanatorium treatment, medicines, and apartments for the disabled remain at last year’s level, while prices for all these expenditures have rocketed. Chornobyl veterans are outraged at the fact that even though next year’s budget is almost double this year’s, financing of Chornobyl programs has increased only by 20.5%. The authors of the letter are convinced that if the budget is adopted in its present version, it will cause further deterioration in the quality of life for victims, whose level of social protection is now only 20-25% of what they had in 1996. In their letter to the president the Chornobyl veterans made a number of suggestions for amending the draft budget for 2005, which are aimed at improving the social safety net of Chornobyl victims. In Chernihiv oblast alone there are 141,000.