The Government will improve mechanisms to assist residents of Luhansk and Donetsk regions

The Government will improve mechanisms to render assistance to the residents of Luhansk and Donetsk regions. This issue was raised at a press conference of Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk on December 30. In particular, what requires improvement is a system of registration and keeping register of the citizens who moved from the areas controlled by the terrorists.

Nowadays 823 thousand people have been registered as internally displaced, of whom 617 thousand have received certain accommodation. To help the settlers there has been spent UAH 328 million - the disabled receive UAH 884 per month, the capable - UAH 442. In general to get employment 30 thousand citizens have appealed. 5 thousand of them were employed and 20 thousand were assigned an unemployed status.

Here arises "a little question": over 800 thousand have been registered, 617 thousand are residing, and only 30 thousand appealed to the relevant social agencies for employment.

"Looking at these numbers, I have to be honest: we have no 820 thousand displaced persons. We have 820 thousand who have moved, but certain part of these people received pensions, by the way, we have spent UAH 2.4 billion, and returned back. This is a social pension tourism", concluded the Prime Minister.

Hence, it is necessary “to improve the system of registration of citizens”, but an ultimate goal is establishing conditions for these people to return back home.

"Our target is to remove Russian terrorists from Donetsk and Luhansk and to do everything to return the citizens who escaped, as they were frightened there, they could have made hostages, to return them back home," said Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

How much money is needed to restore Luhansk and Donetsk regions is yet impossible to calculate: "Until we regain control over the territories and send there experts and specialists who will be able to evaluate the actual losses of the infrastructure, we will not have the number".

The Prime Minister stressed that gas and electricity for these regions will be supplied, as "we can't cause there a humanitarian catastrophe". "If you turn off gas and electricity, people will freeze and die. We can't do it. But the amounts of funds reserved by the Government for the payment of pensions, benefits, subsidies, for the protected and unprotected articles of local budget expenditures for Donetsk and Luhansk regions in those areas where we aren’t temporarily exercising control, will be reduced by the cost of gas and electricity. It seems to me that it is fair," noted Arseniy Yatsenyuk.