Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal stated the need to raise salaries for employees of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. During a meeting with the heads of communities in Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, he emphasized that the issue of wages for ChNPP employees was actively discussed at several meetings dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
This is reported by Finway
Preparation for Salary Increases
According to the minister, all requests for increased funding have been forwarded to the Ministry of Finance. Together with the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister, it was decided that additional funds should be allocated by the Ministry of Finance. Currently, joint work on this issue is ongoing, and an agreement has already been reached that the salaries of ChNPP employees will be raised to the level of Energoatom employees.
“All requests to the Ministry of Finance have been sent… A relevant meeting was held under the leadership of the Prime Minister. We agreed with the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister that these, shall we say, additional funds will be allocated by the Ministry of Finance and financed. Now we need to do this work together. And, of course, people (at ChNPP – ed.) need their salaries to be adjusted. We agreed that salaries should be raised to the level of Energoatom,” said the minister.
Position of the Ministry of Finance and Support from Energoatom
Shmyhal also reported that he held a separate meeting with the leadership of Energoatom, which supports the approach to increasing salaries. According to him, all necessary preparatory steps have now been completed. It is expected that a solution regarding the allocation of additional funding will be found together with the Ministry of Finance in the near future.
Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko confirmed the receipt of the relevant request from the Ministry of Energy and noted that further steps depend on the process of adopting the state budget. If the budget is adopted as a whole or during the second reading, necessary changes will be made to ensure salary increases for ChNPP employees.
In response to a question from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky regarding the timeline for making a decision, Serhiy Marchenko suggested that the issue would be resolved by June of this year. The president urged to expedite this process.
Recall that recently the Ministry of Internal Affairs published a unique archive of documents related to the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster.