Translated material
The main thing is participation
Tatyana Golikova calls for the use of unemployed people on Olympic construction sites
In those years when the Russian economy was growing, and oil windfalls ensured a constant increase in jobs, the authorities practically ceased to control the labor market, which today is frantically getting rid of “superfluous people.” This fact was recognized yesterday by the Minister of Health and Social Development Tatyana Golikova, speaking at the government hour on unemployment problems in the State Duma. In her opinion, not only federal but also regional leaders, who should be in contact with the owners and management of large cities, are to blame for the fact that officials did not predict such a rapid emergence of a layer of citizens who were suddenly left without a livelihood after the start of the crisis. - and budget-forming enterprises.Today, unemployment in the country is growing very quickly, and the authorities have to act in emergency mode. “As of February 11, the number of unemployed people registered with employment agencies amounted to 1 million 807 thousand 600 people,” Ms. Golikova said yesterday. At the same time, a week earlier the number of unemployed was significantly less - 1 million 735 thousand 300 people. During the period from October last year to February, the number of unemployed Russians increased by 1.1 million people. According to the head of the Ministry of Health and Social Development, this means that unemployment is growing at a rate that is outstripping the calculations of her department - today it is already 200 thousand higher than the forecast figure for the entire 2009. After all, initially the basic figure was 1.6 temporarily unemployed citizens who were registered. Now officials are inclined to focus on the level of 2.2 million unemployed by the end of the year.
Errors in calculations and forecasts for unemployment are fraught with additional social upheavals, because it is on the basis of such forecasts that the treasury calculates the amount of budget funding required to pay benefits. According to Tatyana Golikova, taking into account the change in the forecast for official unemployment this year, an additional 34 billion rubles will need to be allocated from the federal budget. to support regional employment programs and benefit payments. Let us recall that previously the government had already allocated about 44 billion rubles. for these purposes.
The funds allocated by the government will go mostly to the regions to implement programs to prevent mass unemployment. In particular, the Ministry of Health and Social Development is ready to provide subsidies to enterprises planning to reduce staff for the creation of alternative employment positions, retraining and retraining of personnel. More than ten federal subjects have already submitted their programs to the government, and, according to the conditions, they themselves must find at least 5% of the funds. The slowness of regional officials in demanding money from Moscow does not seem to surprise Ms. Golikova. “The current situation today, on the one hand, forced the regional authorities to deal with this, but it took them a lot of time since the New Year to build up and understand the situation,” she explained yesterday.
True, not everyone is confident that these programs will pay off. Speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov told RIA Novosti yesterday that “regional employment programs turned out to be mostly of low quality, quite often just a set of platitudes without real calculations.” Tatyana Golikova herself yesterday did not dare to express herself in the same way, but put forward a proposal for the “centralized” use of temporarily unoccupied - for example, in the construction of Olympic facilities in Sochi or bridges to Russky Island in the Far East, where the APEC summit will take place in 2012. According to the minister, it is on such construction sites that “exactly the labor force that is released should be used, with the least focus on foreign labor.”
The deputies seemed to like the idea of replacing guest workers with unemployed ones, and in general the report of the head of the Ministry of Health and Social Development passed without incident. It turns out that the State Duma already knows that about 18 thousand Russian enterprises are planning staff reductions and have already notified employment services about this. For their part, legislators proposed using the released personnel for major repairs of schools, hospitals, emergency facilities, and for the construction of housing for young families, veterans, and Chernobyl survivors. And they suggested that the Ministry of Health and Social Development petition the cabinet to allocate funds to finance such programs. Also, United Russia Duma members raised the issue of reducing the burden on small businesses and citizens who independently create jobs for themselves. True, this no longer has anything to do with Tatyana Golikova’s department.