Weekly Roundup
Using good old Soviet editorial clichОs, the working masses of Cherkasy oblast gave a standing ovation to President Kuchma’s opening address to the round table organized by the Economist Tuesday, particularly rejoicing at his statement that Ukraine has entered a new stage which will ensure economic growth. And the loudest applause was heard from a grade school at Ratsiv, a village in Chyhyryn district.
According to the school principal, Halyna Demchuk (she spoke at an extraordinary meeting of the regional teachers’ trade union committee in Cherkasy Tuesday), some of Ratsiv’s teachers have paid their electricity bills in advance to 2015, using clearing procedures (all told the government owes oblast teachers Hr 20 million in back pay), and they do not know what to do with the rest of the money never received but figuring on accounts.
The more practical-minded, fearing that this “economic growth” will mean electricity shutoffs in the countryside, are stocking up on manure, enough to last to 2015, the more so that the local collective farm generously supplies the odoriferous product on account of those same clearing payments.
Prompted by big-hearted Comrade Natalia Vitrenko, Verkhovna Rada once again burned with love for the people. The previous poverty line was Hr 73.3, Hr 78 was proposed by the Cabinet, but the People’s Deputies voted for a Hr 118.6; minimum wage, previously at Hr 55, proposed up to Hr 65, was adopted at Hr 148. Another standing ovation was in order, but the nationwide audience gave this all the cold shoulder. “They keep raising wages, so what?,” I was told by Volodymyr Dyhaliuk, a worker at Kyiv’s Mahnit Plant. “I’d rather they kept them at Hr 48, so long as we could get our pay every month. I have three kids and I haven’t been paid for three years! How am I supposed to live?” (Silence).
The President instituted 100 state lifelong stipends for creative persons reaching age 70. In Cherkasy the local authorities cannot find money for the museum of People’s Artist Danylo Narbut, although the other day the City Council resolved to install a bronze bust on one of the boulevards, and there is a chair and a typewriter in one of the local newspaper editorial offices that once belonged to another noted resident of Cherkasy, Vasyl Symonenko.
Of course, there should be museums dedicated to both, but in the province, as in the capital, no one will lift a finger without receiving instructions from on high, even to perpetuate the memory of people whose talent is recognized the world over. (Scattered applause.)
Prices are up in Cherkasy, even for such a commodity of “basic necessity” as a coffin which now costs about 15% more than previously. (Standing ovation.)
