“The Verkhovna Rada should set a task to the Cabinet of Ministers to urgently approve a new strategy to combat poverty in Ukraine until 2030,” Olena Kondratiuk
01 February 2021, 12:45
This was stated by Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Olena Kondratiuk during the Conciliation Council of Deputy Factions and Groups.
“We expect the Government to implement the Resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on measures aimed at social protection of the population in connection with the increase in prices and tariffs for housing and communal services. However, increasing the amount of funding for subsidies by amending the State Budget for 2021 does not solve the problem systematically,” she remarked.
The Vice Speaker stated that poverty is growing in Ukraine, and the corona crisis has only worsened the situation of the people. Thus, according to international institutions, in 2020 the poverty rate in Ukraine has risen to 50%, and about 19 million Ukrainians live below the poverty line.
“Therefore, the Verkhovna Rada should set a task for the Cabinet of Ministers to urgently approve a new strategy to combat poverty in Ukraine until 2030. Overcoming poverty is a task No. 1 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. By 2030, our state must reduce the level of poverty, in particular, by eliminating its extreme forms,” emphasized Olena Kondratiuk.
The Deputy Chairperson noted that the latest Poverty Reduction Strategy in Ukraine, approved by the Government in 2016, was designed for 2020. “There is no new strategy. And it should be based on labor, not on a social subsidy basis, with the task of raising pensions to the subsistence level,” Olena Kondratiuk stressed.
She reminded that the Verkhovna Rada of the ninth convocation held parliamentary hearings on “Problems of forming the subsistence level in Ukraine.” As a result of the hearings, recommendations were adopted for the Government, one of which is to bring the subsistence level in Ukraine to the real needs of citizens.