Ukraine: Kyiv Street Cleaners Get a Raise · Global Voices
Veronica Khokhlova

Kyiv street cleaners – all 6,000 of them – will be getting $400 a month from now on. This raise, city administration officials hope, will help hire 3,500 more people needed to keep the Ukrainian capital (pop. nearly 3,000,000) tidy.
Judging by a discussion (RUS, UKR) that erupted after the Ukrainian news website Korrespondent.net ran an item on this salary increase initiative, the city's laborer corps might soon become overstaffed – and many of the new recruits are likely to be overqualified for the humble yet arduous work of a street cleaner:
Levyi_Tip: Ha, I bet this is going to make many people jealous… On to a different occupation, gentlemen!
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KPSS: A country of idiots – a street cleaner is making three times more than a doctor!
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Evgen1: And a candidate of medical sciences makes 1,400 [hryvnias, $280 a month] )) Becomes clear at once who rules the country.
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Slv: […] An obstetrician-gynecologist, college-educated, with legal responsibility and 30 years of experience, smokes aside nervously with his 800 hryvnias [$160 a month].
alkaidenko: Don't worry for a doctor, if he's not a complete fool, he'll make as much as he needs. But the streets have to be clean or else we'll all die and no doctor will help us.
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Odess: [To Slv]: Where have you seen that obstetrician-gynecologist with 800 hryvnias [a month] – in a highest security male prison? My friend makes 5,000 hryvnias ($1,000 a month) in this profession.
Slv: [To Odess] In what clinic does she work??? In a private one??? In state ones they've never paid this kind of money (5,000 hryvnias).
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Shusha: Damn! It's what a lecturer gets outside of Kyiv!!! All of us should become street cleaners! Who needs crazy lecturers like myself??? […]
nnn: Damn… I'm an electronics engineer, we're working on thingies for ships and making less in Kherson. :)
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qwerty: Wow! Our computer guy makes 1,250 [hryvnias, $250 a month], and the chief bookkeeper 1,300 [hryvnias, $260 a month]! I want to be a street cleaner!
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007: Too bad you've written about this – all of Ternopil will now head to Kyiv…
Xrenase: Poor me, I work six days a week here for 2,000 [hryvnias, $400 a month], and this is intellectual work, and he, a poor guy, can decide what to clean and what not to, and makes as much money. Time to leave, until it's too late.
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Andrey: Kyiv city administration is responsible for street cleaners. And the Cabinet of Ministers is responsible for doctors. Questions on doctors have to be addressed to [Mykola Azarov, first vice prime minister, minister of finance of Ukraine] and [prime minister Victor Yanukovych].
Lunacharskiy: People, are you really jealous of street cleaners? If you are making less, then it's time to look for something with a better salary! Only there are people out there, who've found a job and sit on it until retirement, doing nothing, envying the more successful ones, even the street cleaners, not willing to change something for the better themselves, lazy…
barius: You folks who make as much or less – change a job or demand more money. Our country's main problem is that people do not know how to value their own labor and are satisfied with little.
Kiev: This is all very good, of course. But it would've been better if they were giving raises proportionally to everyone. I, for example, am very concerned about teachers’ salaries: they are forced to give lower grades to children (!!) in order to tutor them for money. Not all are like this, but there're enough… A teacher has to think about the children and not of the ways to make money… And this is the responsibility of our state.
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Demjan: I graduated from the Kyiv Polytechnics. Electrical mechanics engineer, my salary is 800 hryvnias [$160 a month], it's not funny. The only way out is to escape to the west.
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SS: As strange as it sounds, but I also graduated from [the Kyiv Polytechnics] (an electrical mechanic as well). My official salary is 5,000 hryvnias [$1,000 a month] + awards + additional earnings + all kinds of bonuses. It's not enough to graduate from the Polytechnics – you've gotta be an engineer as well, and not some [dishwasher].
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50 bln: Fifty billion dollars of investments are gone to Africa – the money that could've been in Ukraine. And now do a calculation on how many street cleaners, lecturers […] and other professions would've gotten preferences, as well as how many Ukrainian officials would've taken part in drowning this project. But in Ukraine, they'll continue to read [Yulia Tymoshenko]'s articles, discuss honorary citizenship for [Verka Serdyuchka] and seek favors with [Gazprom].
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