Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov asked the government for an additional Hr 2 billion ($70 million) from the national COVID-19 fund despite the fund having already been taken apart by various agencies, including his own.
The government had assembled the Hr 66 billion ($2.4 billion) COVID fund earlier this year by cutting budgets for education, culture, energy efficiency and innovation.
But President Volodymyr Zelensky rerouted more than half of the fund to building roads, in an initiative that blurs the line between infrastructure repair and a Servant of the People campaign stunt.
A lot of the fund also went towards programs that have little to do with COVID. For example, the Energy Ministry asked for Hr 140 million for a uranium mine but it’s unknown whether it received it. The money was fully split up by September and only a portion of it was spent on health care needs.
On Oct. 2, non-profit organization State Watch released a copy of Avakov’s letter, in which he asked Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal for Hr 2 billion to pay police officers, even though the cabinet already allocated Hr 2.25 billion for extra payments to the police in June.
As of the end of August, 99.4% of the allocated funds were already spent.
Avakov’s letter says his ministry has yet to pay 50% of outstanding police salaries and needs the extra money to do so, “to ensure law and order and citizens safety from Aug. 1 through Nov. 31.” The money is supposed to go to 54,352 police officers, whose monthly salary averages Hr 15,340 per person, with bonuses of Hr 7,600.
State Watch chairman Hleb Kanevsky told media that the COVID fund’s main problem is a lack of official spending priorities. The law that created the fund failed to specify which state bodies are allowed to access the money, nor did it spell out what specific needs it was designed to cover.
Avakov had previously asked for Hr 2.6 billion for extra payments to police, the border protection service and the national guard back in May.
Separately, doctors may have finally started to receive their bonus pay that had been promised all the way back in March.
According to the cabinet’s COVID fund site, Hr 635 million has been paid out as of Oct. 1. This is just over 10% of the Hr 6 billion allocated for medical salary bonuses.
