Crisis Management: Why MPs Are Cutting “Million” Salaries at the Verkhovna Rada’s Secretariat? UPD
Members of Parliament are collecting signatures for a draft resolution to reduce expenses in the Verkhovna Rada’s Secretariat.
These funds are intended to be redistributed to pay the salaries of parliamentary assistants, as reported by the civic initiative “Holka.”
Already, signatures from over 80 MPs have been gathered, and the resolution could be considered in the coming days.
Following the publication and analysis of declarations, it became known that the salaries of MPs heading committees could be three times lower than the salaries of secretariat heads within the same committee. This situation distorts the civil service sector, as highlighted by the civic initiative “Holka” earlier this year.
The chairs of committees in the Verkhovna Rada earn significantly less annually than the heads of village councils.
The head of the “Holos” faction, MP Oleksandra Ustynova, emphasizes that currently, MPs are concerned not about their own salaries, but rather about their inability to hire assistants to help with legislative activities.
Why are changes needed?
Oleksandra Ustynova
Member of Parliament, Chair of the "Holos" faction
In the times of the "Party of Regions," dozens of parliamentary assistants were primarily for the protection of MPs and their entourage, often having "connections" to address their issues. Today, our country needs high-quality legislation, and quality work deserves compensation. MPs shouldn't have to worry about how to fund the work of 2-3 assistants. It's unfair that dozens of people in the Parliament's departments earn high salaries while MPs struggle to find funds for their legislative assistants, who are essential for drafting laws.
The issue with income among civil servants in Ukraine has always existed. Official salaries could be meager, while bonuses were exorbitant. That’s why international partners demanded, as part of civil service reform, to balance the pay structure in the sector at a ratio of “70 to 30” (Salary 70%, and bonuses no more than 30%). This was intended to reduce the dependence of employees on the whims of their superiors.
However, this norm was omitted from the basic law on civil service adopted in 2015.
This year, the government decided to balance the pay system through a line in the 2024 state budget and a government resolution. Instead, there should have been a basic bill introducing a system of salary classification and positions.
At the end of the year, the Verkhovna Rada protected its apparatus in the final provisions: the conditions for the payment of civil servants, as determined by other provisions, do not apply to determining the payment of the Verkhovna Rada apparatus. This was stipulated in amendments to the draft state budget, including by Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk and Vice Speaker Oleksandr Korniyenko.
Scandalous amendments to the 2024 state budget
Such actions by the parliament at the end of the previous budget year caused changes in staffing schedules in courts. This led to the establishment of departments and divisions within the Supreme Court, aimed at equalizing the situation within the civil service sector and for its own apparatus.
Halyna Tretyakova, Chair of the Committee on Social Policy and Veterans’ Rights Protection (“Servant of the People”), explains why lawmakers are currently addressing the issue of salaries for parliamentary assistants:
How can the issue be resolved?
Halyna Tretyakova
Chair of the Committee on Social Policy and Veterans' Rights Protection ("Servant of the People")
The law allows each deputy to have up to 31 assistants. The total cost of maintaining all of them amounts to, think about it, 70,000 hryvnias per month net. So, calculate how many experts can be hired. The functions of assistants include handling correspondence, legal and analytical support in drafting bills and submitting amendments for the second reading, preparing materials for temporary investigative and special commissions, and much more. However, having an assistant is now a luxury that falls on the shoulders of the deputy, who is essentially the employer. This should not be the case when we talk about strong and independent institutions working in the interests of the state. Therefore, today we are obliged to discuss the issue of assistants because poor legislative quality means Ukraine loses out. The project will not require additional funding for the Verkhovna Rada in 2024. Everything will be covered by the internal reserves of the Verkhovna Rada budget. The issue of deputies' salaries is not currently under consideration.
The head of the civic initiative “Holka,” Iryna Fedoriv, emphasizes that the state finally needs to carry out civil service reform.
Why is state service reform necessary?
Iryna Fedoriv
The head of the civic initiative "Holka"
Income should correspond to the level of responsibility and complexity of tasks. All of this should be fixed in a basic law that introduces a salary and position classification system. Parliamentarians cannot create unique conditions for their own apparatus. This distorts the conditions of remuneration in the state service. Playing populism with the salaries of MPs, who actually have low salaries, can cost the country dearly. If we do not change this, questions about the votes needed to make decisions in the session hall during times of war will be raised more and more frequently. And if we continue to elect the next parliament under such populist conditions, Ukraine will lose years in its development. Remember Chernovetskyi with a salary of 1 UAH per month. He is no longer here, but now there are dozens of court cases in Kyiv. We heroically defend the scattered remains of his team, including land near Pyrohovo.
After the publication of the article on the “Holka” website, members of parliament reported that they were facing pressure from the Verkhovna Rada Apparatus. Some MPs withdrew their signatures from the initiative to introduce a draft resolution to parliament. Tretyakova provided screenshots of such messages and requested that her Facebook post be considered a statement of a crime.
The heads of committee secretariats received million-dollar incomes in 2022. These amounts exceeded the annual income of committee heads by several times. The highest amount was received by the head of the budget committee secretariat, Andriy Vatulov, with over 1.5 million UAH. For comparison, at that time, the chairman of the committee, MP Yuriy Aristov ("Servant of the People"), received just over 0.4 million UAH per year. These findings are based on the analysis of declarations of committee heads and secretariat heads of the Verkhovna Rada for the year 2022 conducted by the civic initiative "Holka."
