By the end of the week, some of Lviv’s street cleaners and tram drivers may not receive their wages, as the State Treasury Service has halted payments for transport operations and sanitation services.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi reported this.
According to him, payments totalling more than 500 million hryvnias have not been processed in Lviv. In addition to municipal workers’ wages, this also affects preparations for winter, funding for medical and educational facilities, and emergency repair work after missile attacks.
“We need to understand that these are Lviv residents’ taxes that the state has effectively frozen. We understand that in the fifth year of the full-scale war, the situation with the state budget is genuinely difficult. Savings are needed, but certainly not at the expense of municipal workers. For many of them, this wage is critically important,” the mayor said.
Sadovyi added that he spoke yesterday about the situation with Ukraine’s Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi. The head of government explained that this was a forced decision and that critical payments would gradually be processed manually.
“The situation may improve within a month. We are monitoring it closely,” he added.
Sadovyi also said he considers it unethical to receive his own salary until payments for municipal workers resume, and has waived his salary for the time being.
He urged members of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and members of the Cabinet of Ministers to take the same decision “as a sign of solidarity with people who must receive their wages on time for work completed on time”.
“It is not normal when an official is first in the queue for a salary, and the person who keeps the city running with their own hands is last. You can say it is populism. I don’t care. The main thing is that people’s payments are restored,” the mayor concluded.