The Government convened a session yesterday. The first to arrive at the meeting was the Chief Sanitary Inspector, Gennady Onishchenko, who has been featured in the news recently in connection with the swine flu epidemic in Mexico. He watched the arriving ministers with a professional air. Upon his arrival in the hall, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who recently returned from the United States, received an especially long gaze.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin began the meeting on the topic of the swine flu. He wanted to be constantly apprised of the situation concerning the epidemic, and of the need for any urgent measures.
The main topic, however, was unemployment. Mr Putin cited statistics showing that the increase in unemployment was levelling off. Unemployment rose by 9% in January and February, and is now increasing by 1.6% a week.
"But it is still growing," Mr Putin said, and instructed his subordinates that "We should preserve our workforce, and enable people to learn a new trade or find a source of income".
The Government has allocated almost 80 billion roubles to create jobs, and more than half of that money has already been distributed. This money will allow more than a million jobs to be created, 220,000 people to be retrained, 50,000 to receive on-the-job training, and assistance for 16,000 workers in moving to other regions. Support will be extended to 52,000 entrepreneurs, who should create an additional 150,000 jobs.
The anti-crisis measures, in the Prime Minister's opinion, should be connected with objectives for the country's development. Sixty strategic projects are being planned. The first of them is the modernisation of the pension system.
"It is symbolic that we began with the pension system," said Mr Putin, promising that real pensions (adjusted for inflation) would grow by 9% in 2009, and that by 2010 the labour pension would be 7,946 roubles and the social pension would be 4,917 roubles. The Prime Minister stressed that the pension should not be less than the official cost of living in a particular region. By 2024, the pension should amount to at least 2.5 times the minimum cost of living.
By Larisa Kaftan