The chairman of the Odessa regional administration Mikheil Saakashvili says the new system of electronic declaration of income is mockery of civil servants, because "no one lives on a salary."
"The civil service is completely demoralized. Many officials end up in jail... But how big are the salaries that you pay to public servants to stop them from taking [bribes]?" Saakashvili said on the news TV channel 112 Ukraine on 25 October.
"We have small islands with good salaries: NABU, patrol police to a degree… Almost no one of civil servants lives on a salary, so it's all a bunch of lies and hypocrisy. No one lives on a salary," he went on.
"And this e-declaration is a mockery. […] We totally destabilize the civil service by saying: we will bust you in batches, you must fill in the e-declaration, and we can bring you all [to justice] at any time, but we will not pay [good] salaries. The number of civil service servants must be reduced at least two-fold, and salaries must be paid for a real job," he concluded.
All senior officials must submit declarations of income and assets through the system of electronic declaration by the end of October, and the government must secure free public access to this data. This commitment is structural beacon of IMF.
Junior public servants will have to submit e-declarations since 2017.