How do they survive? — Mykolaiv discusses raising salaries for educators

Mykolaiv is discussing raising salaries for educators. Photo: kindergarten in Odesa, archive NikVesti

Mykolaiv discussed the possibility of introducing municipal allowances for kindergarten teachers. The mayor instructed the education department to prepare calculations and options for applying to the government for funding.

The issue was considered on 30 October during a session of the Mykolaiv City Council, according to NikVesti.

Mykolaiv City Council deputy Artem Iliuk stressed that the level of salaries for educators is extremely low, and the city should find ways to support these workers.

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«Regarding kindergarten teachers. We have been talking about municipal allowances for a long time. This process has already been launched for doctors and school teachers. But, in fact, when you hear about the level of salaries of educators, it is unpleasant. I don't understand how people survive at all. What can we do? Can we introduce a municipal allowance from the local budget? Perhaps we should appeal to the Verkhovna Rada, to our MPs, who could help implement this at the state level,» said Artem Iliuk.

MP Oleksandr Bereza suggested that librarians, technical staff in schools and non-medical workers in hospitals should also be taken into account in order to cover all categories of low-wage earners when appealing to the government.

Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych supported the initiative and said he would instruct the Education Department to prepare an analysis of the possibilities of establishing such allowances and calculate the amounts required.

«We will discuss this issue in the commissions and, possibly, formulate an appeal to MPs, the Ministry of Finance and the Cabinet of Ministers to allocate an additional subvention,» he said.

MP Dmytro Sichko also proposed to reconsider the priorities in the allocation of budget funds. For example, instead of increasing the duration of lighting in the city by 1 hour — approximately 10 million hryvnias — these funds should be allocated to a more important need — support for kindergarten teachers.

«If we are considering increasing the lighting by one hour, and we have already determined that it costs 10 million, then, in my opinion, it would be much more important to spend this 10 million on additional payments to kindergarten teachers, rather than on increasing the lighting by one hour, which is not critically necessary,» the deputy said.

The mayor replied that so far, these are only preliminary calculations, not real funds that can be redistributed. He stressed that raising salaries for educators is indeed a more important issue, but financial decisions should be made based on the real possibilities of the budget.

«Dmytro, these 10 million did not appear at our council meeting just now. But we need to understand where to get these funds from. We did not create an additional 10 million just by talking about it. We only informed that such funds may appear if there is an opportunity to reduce funding for a certain programme and allocate this money for lighting,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.