The lack of constructive budget changes and reforms carried out by Ukraine's government is pushing out some of the country’s most promising Western-educated reformers.
The latest big
name to announce their resignation is Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Andriy
Pyvovarsky, who said he was quitting his post during a Cabinet of Ministers
press briefing on Dec. 11.
“This is my
personal decision,” the minister said. “It’s really difficult to work for Hr
6,000, very difficult to ask people to work for Hr 4,000-5,000. This is the
average salary in the ministry. It can’t just be based off of volunteers,” the
minister said during the press briefing.
“This doesn’t
mean that I won’t be working starting from Monday. But I am telling my
colleagues that they shouldn’t rely on me being in the new government,”
Pyvovarsky said. “I ask the deputies to support me and my desire to resign,”
Pyvovarsky said.
The minister
says that he would return to the private sector and would stay in Ukraine.
His two deputy
ministers, Volodymyr Shulmeister and Volodymyr Omelyan, will also resign,
according to a ministry press release published shortly after the press
briefing.
Before working
in the public sector, Pyvovarsky was the general director of Continuum, a group
of companies that owns the WOG gas station chain. He also worked at an
investment research and consultancy agency, and was a former managing director
of Dragon Capital, an investment bank.
During a Kyiv Post
interview back in September, Pyvovarsky said that he would consider his work as
a success if he could achieve the restructuring of state-owned enterprises
Ukrzalyznitsya, Ukrposhta, Ukravtodor, Ukraine’s state-owned stevedoring
companies and the adoption of European Union standards for road safety.
Pyvovarsky
believes these goals were achieved and that fundamental changes have been made
that will continue reform within the ministry, the press release reads.
“My mood is
that every single day (could be) my last day in office, so I have to get as
much as possible completed by the time I am done,” Pyvovarsky told the Kyiv
Post.
Kyiv Post staff writer Ilya Timtchenko can be reached at
[email protected].
