Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons Oksana Koliada has said that the ministry would be reorganized and the future Ministry for Reintegration might be headed by the respective deputy prime minister.
“We have managed to communicate the information about a huge scope of tasks, which lie in the area of responsibility of the entire government and make the country’s top management understand that it should be separated into a bloc of tasks for a specific ministry, which could be possibly headed by the respective deputy prime minister. However, we understand that instead of reviving the Ministry for Occupied Territories we should change the paradigm and speak about the effective work of the Ministry for Reintegration. Our team is generating its suggestions and we will present them soon,” Koliada said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
She also said that the reintegration issues simply do not fit the functions of a single ministry, even a merged one, as there is a need for cooperation between sectors.
“It does not mean that we worked ineffectively,” the minister said, adding that the ministry is holding consultations in order to prepare for the break-up.
“It is very important to us to generalize and share our experience and best practices for the reboot of a new ministry for reintegration,” she said.
To a question on how the reorganization will look like technically, Koliada said that there are several options, including the abolition of the instruction to merge two ministries. However, she said that for that moment she did not have information on who would head the future Ministry for the Occupied Territories after the break-up.
While commenting on the core idea of the merger of the ministries, Koliada said that “the logic was to classify the management processes and cut the expenditures on the government staff.”
As reported, on August 29, 2019, the Verkhovna Rada approved the decision to create the Ministry for Veterans’ Affairs, Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons. Earlier there existed the Ministry for the Temporarily Occupied Territories and Veterans’ Affairs. Koliada headed the new ministry.
Later, Koliada said that she did not understand how one ministry can work with two different auditories at the same time.
On January 17, 2020, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that it was necessary to break up some ministries and ordered Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk to make proposals on several ministries, including the Ministry for Veterans’ Affairs, Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons.
