On December 3, representatives of the All-Ukrainian Chornobyl People’s Party picketed the buildings of Verkhovna Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers. In the past few days this has been the second protest staged by Chornobyl cleanup team survivors and victims of the catastrophe. According to them, they have been forced to take to the streets by what they call an unlawful budget bill for next year. First, it does not provide for adequate social security, meeting a mere 20% of actual needs. Second, it shelves social welfare programs for Chornobyl victims and suspends payments of benefits and compensation. Third, it does not provide for the payment of back pay from previous years amounting to UAH 744 million. And finally, it does not provide for the indexation of pensions and disbursements due Chornobyl victims. The protesters’ trump card is a ruling of the Constitutional Court. It will be recalled that in March the court ruled unconstitutional the suspension of Chornobyl victims’ benefits. Acting party head Mykola Isayev is determined to stand his ground. According to him, the budget bill is by definition antisocial in its treatment of Chornobyl victims. He went on to warn the government and deputies that unless they heed the protesters’ demands they will have to face the pleading and protesting Chornobyl victims on a daily basis.
On December 3, Mykhailo Papiyev, Labor and Social Policy Minister in the new government headed by Viktor Yanukovych, was introduced to the ministry staff. Simultaneously, the war on poverty was yet again identified as the main mission of the government and, thus, of the ministry and its new head. The same day marked a scientific conference during which a statistical publication, Gauging Poverty: Developing Indices of Socioeconomic Security of Ukrainian Population, was presented to the public. The study has been published as part of a joint project launched by the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine, International Labor Organization (ILO), and UN Office in Ukraine. As The Day learned from Ihor Chernyshev, chief statistician at the ILO integration policy department, since the Ukrainian government has decided to combat poverty it must know the extent of the problem in the country and have at its disposal all the required statistical data to help it make the right decisions. As for financial resources, Mr. Chernyshev believes they can be found in the country, which has been showing signs of sustained economic growth of late. Meanwhile, the results of two nationwide surveys conducted as part of the said project (Basic Security of Ukrainian Population, 9,400 persons polled, and The Policy of Flexibility at Industrial Enterprises, covering each sixth Ukrainian enterprise employing 1.1 million persons or 32% of those employed in industry) have provided material for consideration and materials for specific government actions. Thus, according to ILO representative Guy Standing, the survey results were astounding in that four in five Ukrainians consider themselves poor and rightly so, since living standards are extremely low in Ukraine and people cannot afford adequate healthcare, housing, clothes, and food. According to Mr. Standing, the worst of it is that most people do not believe that government agencies can solve poverty-related problems. As he put it, funds earmarked for combating poverty simply do not reach those who claim to seek help from their kin and friends instead of official agencies. Citing the survey results, the ILO representative said that most Ukrainians (62%) do not identify themselves as middle class, 20% hesitated or failed to answer, and a mere 17.2% think of themselves as belonging to this social group, while 79% of Ukrainians call themselves poor.
The new government might also take an interest in the results of poverty surveys by region, which have changed substantially. To illustrate, according to Olena Novykova, social security department chief at the Institute for the Economy of Industry with the National Academy of Sciences, as compared to 2000, survey results in 2002 suggest a drastic change in the distribution of regions according to the level of social security. Thus Kharkiv oblast has climbed from 17th to 3rd place, Dnipropetrovsk from 12th to 8th, Donetsk from 16th to 6th, Zakarpattia from 22nd to 9th, the Crimea from 20th to 5th, and Zaporizhzhia from 19th to 4th place. By contrast, social security has deteriorated in Kirovohrad, Lviv, Poltava, Sumy, Ternopil, Kherson, Khmelnytsky, Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, and Chernihiv oblasts. Most probably, this is where the authorities will face major problems in the coming elections.
Speaking to The Day, Mariya Sokolyk, a fellow of the Institute for Economic Forecasting, who also attended the conference, broached the issue of relative poverty. “If I made $5,000 a year (the poverty line in the US) I would be considered relatively affluent in Ukraine.” Ms. Sokolyk believes that the level of poverty should depend not only on income level, but also a person’s mode of living and form of participation in social life. According to her, an assessment based only on income level is not accurate enough. As she put it, “If the powers that be saw to it that people form a certain mode of living and freely participate in the social life, if they catered to their needs (intellectual, for one thing), then people like me would feel satisfied and support the policy they pursue.”
