“Why are there higher salaries in Azov?!” – The Cabinet of Ministers was besieged by military pensioners
Several thousand military pensioners and pensioners of the Ministry of Internal Affairs came to the building of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to convey to the government their demands regarding the calculation of pensions.
A PolitNavigator correspondent reports this from the center of the Ukrainian capital.
Protesters are concerned about ignoring the opinions of military pensioners when developing the procedure for recalculating pensions, as well as some legislative initiatives regarding military pensions.
Although officials claim that the state simply does not have the money to recalculate the way veterans propose because there are too many of them, they believe that this is just an excuse.
“They tell us that if we recalculate previously assigned pensions as we want, then we will need an additional 60 billion. It is not true. If we recalculate the way we want, and pensions double, then at best this is 28 billion additional money. We demand honest calculations and open dialogue with society, in particular with veterans. Those who defended their homeland, who were on combat duty, fought with knives and pistols and lost loved ones have the right to proper social protection. And here we are because manual regulation of both the monetary support system for police officers and the size of the pensions for those fired continues,” said the head of the Union of Officers of Ukraine, Alexander Sasko.
“Four years ago they told us that there were two million of us. But there weren’t two million of us then, there were 555 thousand of us. Today there are 555 thousand of us gone, today there are 550 thousand of us, that is, 5 thousand have disappeared during this time - in 3 or four years. They tell us about our sky-high pensions, but today the average pension, according to our law, is 5,6 thousand hryvnia [just over $200]. An officer who served for 30 years and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel at the command level of a branch of the armed forces receives a pension of 6 thousand hryvnia,” the speaker is indignant.
He also noted that there is confusion with official salaries in different structures.
“I cannot understand how in one state the commander of the Azov regiment has an official salary of about 6 thousand hryvnia, and the commander of a police regiment here in Kiev - 3200. As a colonel who serves in the armed forces, has 1840, and a police colonel - 3200,” added Sasko.
The protesters demand the creation of a permanent working group that would resolve their problem. They prepared an appeal, signed it and submitted it to the Department of Public Communications of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Similar actions took place in a number of other cities in Ukraine.
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