At today's VR session Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk urged the Parliament to vote on a government bill on civil service and to support the amendment stipulating for the setting up a Fund to increase salaries for civil servants financed by the EU and other international donors. The PM said in Parliament on Thursday, 26 November.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk noted that the Government had submitted to Parliament a draft law on public service: "The Parliament have been busy working on this law."

"We believe that this bill should be voted on today and be enacted as soon as possible", he stressed.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk underlined, pursuant to the governmental draft law public service should be depoliticized: "It should become efficient, independent and highly professional."

He stressed that one of the main problems entailing corruption in the public service today is extremely low wages: "The people who have knowledge, either don't go into public service as it is hard to work for 3 thousand hryvnias, or they work earning 3 thousand hryvnias, but take bribes worth thousands of dollars".

"Besides a reduction in the number of civil servants, which made up 20% last year's, and this - 20%, we have to recruit new and effective ones", he noted.

The Prime Minister appealed to the factions of the coalition and the Speaker of the Parliament during the consideration of a bill to support the amendment on forming the fund to increase salaries for civil servants. Arseniy Yatsenyuk proposed to include the provision aimed at establishing a fund for increasing civil servants' salaries during the transitional period 2016/2017 in Ukraine: "The European Union and other international donors should be engaged in the financing of such a fund. A fund should be formed exclusively on a transparent basis. And the order of an increase in wages for certain categories of civil servants who will receive these increased salaries from this fund will be determined by the Government."

Arseniy Yatsenyuk informed that the negotiations with the European Union on granting Ukraine a separate funding program on an increase in civil servants’ salaries under a program of civil service reform are in progress.

The Prime Minister said that this issue will, in particular, be raised at a meeting of EU-Ukraine Association on 7 December in Brussels for the purpose of attracting financial support from European partners in order to provide higher wages and social protection of civil servants."