Friday, March, 28, 2014, 09:00
Prime Minister Yatsenyuk told the Verkhovna Rada on Thursday that out of UAH 13bn of subsidies that are allocated to the coal industry, “the miners get only UAH 3bn; the rest is stolen.”
He quoted an expert, “who has been working in the coal industry all his life”:
“Out of the UAH 13bn which is spent on the so-called subsidy for the coal industry, he believes that UAH 10bn is stolen and only UAH 3bn reaches the miners.”
“And according to our estimate, this is roughly what happens,” Yatsenyuk said.
“I will give you one number. If we simply close the mines, release the workers and tell them to stay at home and to quit getting down to the mines, and we divide the amount of subsidies among them all – each of them gets 80 thousand a year,” Yatsenyuk said.
“If now we cut the support for the coal industry by half, it will result in our political opponents taking advantage of this. They will take the miners out into streets and say that we are not paying their salaries. That is why we are making this decision: out of UAH 13bn of support we are keeping UAH 12bn as a reserve,” he said.
“I will go to Donetsk to meet with all the miners. I will show them these figures. Then I will come back to the parliament and say how much out of the UAH 12bn we will give to the miners, and how the budget will be allocated for the development of depressed regions and the creation of jobs,” Yatsenyuk said.
The original news in Ukrainian is on the Ukrainska Pravda website:
