Medical worker bonuses held up by bureaucracy, Shmyhal says

Ukraine’s medical workers, who were promised bonuses
of triple their monthly salaries in March for their work in treating the
COVID-19 disease, have yet to receive their payments owing to bureaucratic
trouble, PM Denys Shmyhal told a May 12 meeting of regional administration
heads. “Owing to bureaucratic red tape, we lost time while medics received
salaries without bonuses,” he said, as reported by the pravda.com.ua news site.
At the heart of the red tape is the medical reform that requires institutions to
sign contracts as of April with the National Health Service, which “is not high
today, without which paying the promised triple bonuses (for March) isn’t
possible,” President Zelensky told the same meeting, asking the health minister
to continue to work to solve the problem.

The government’s triple bonuses to COVID-19 medical
workers were only paid in the Poltava region at a sum of UAH 21,000 (USD 786),
Health Minister Maksym Stepanov told a May 11 press briefing in the regional
center. Two days earlier, he announced that he will pursue amendments to the
state budget to raise salaries for second- and third-category medical workers
by 50% as of July 1.

Zenon Zawada: We
highlight this situation to demonstrate how even the simplest proposals to deal
with the coronavirus pandemic are so difficult to implement in Ukraine’s
notorious bureaucracy. Zelensky threatened dismissals last week,
yet such actions are more theatrics than anything meaningful considering that
he himself has admitted the problems lie in the bureaucracy, and not in
corruption.

Stepanov’s predecessor, the U.S.-born Ulana Suprun,
made her latest call this weekend to move forward with the healthcare reform that
she initiated, which include improving salaries for medical workers on a
permanent basis. We agree that any reported plans to abandon its key reforms
will merely allow Ukraine’s infamous red tape bureaucracy to interfere with
improved healthcare.