Arseniy Yatsenyuk instructed Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry to pay off the debt to the coal miners and submit coal industry reform program by end of week

At a session of the Government of Ukraine on Wednesday, 15 April, Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk commissioned the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry to submit for consideration of the Cabinet of Ministers a programme of reform in the coal industry by the end of week and to clear salary arrears to coal miners.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk reminded the law of Ukraine on the State Budget envisages UAH 400 million to repay the debt to workers of the coal industry. He appealed to the Ministry of Finance with a task: "These funds should be allocated and sent to the regions. The Treasury Single Account contains the money – just settle the salary arrears".

However, the Prime Minister stressed that such decisions "do not solve systemic problems, but only extinguish the fire": "Lacking the systemic approach to upgrading the coal industry in general we won’t save money to settle the debts to the companies, those either working inefficiently or lacking customers to buy coal. We have the situation that we purchase imported coal but Ukrainian mines do not receive orders and they have nowhere to sell Ukrainian coal".

Given that Arseniy Yatsenyuk appealed to Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Volodymyr Demchyshyn with a request to submit to the Government a program of reforming the coal industry, as well as to meet with members of labor unions and coal miners to "clearly explain what and how we will do in the coal industry, why such measures are taken by the Government, which mine will operate, what we do with the modernization of boilers".

He reminded about the need to shift from kinds of coal mined mainly from territories temporarily controlled by Russian terrorists to those mined from the territories fully controlled by Ukraine - first of all G rank coal. The Prime Minister also noted to ensure modernization of boilers the Polish Government would allocate USD 50 million to Ukraine.